


Rattle at Will

by goodmourningdove



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Coming Out, Drinking, Everyone Is Alive, Gay Richie Tozier, Inner Dialogue, Introspection, M/M, Midlife Crises, POV Third Person Limited, Pining, Romantic Comedy, School Reunion, Sexual Content, Vulnerability, but emotional cheating is the most dangerous kind huh, except for georgie i'm so sorry, hit-or-miss comedic stylings, mentions of teen dramas both primetime and otherwise, no infidelity, stan is HERE, there is no space clown but there was an incident in middle school it's all very delightfully vague, you ever spend an evening with your childhood best friends and completely lose control of your life?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20993804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmourningdove/pseuds/goodmourningdove
Summary: Mike's call came completely out of fucking nowhere, because:1. Richie didn’t even realize it had been twenty-five years since he left high school, when did he getso goddamn oldand2. He’d assumed that everyone lost touch with each other as much as he had.Like, did everyone just decide to drop everything and run off back home to Cha Cha Slide around a high school gym for an evening? Who even does that?Richie considers what his schedule looks like (busy, he’s got a tour to kick off) and how his last few months have been (busy, he had a script to rehearse into sounding convincing for said tour kick-off) and says:“Yeah, sure, man, I’ll be there.”





	1. Richie Tozier Keeps a Promise

**JUNE 1994**

“We’ll still be friends after all this, right? Like, we’ll all keep in touch?” Ben asks, seemingly to the ceiling from where’s he’s camped out on his back on the floor of the clubhouse. The rest of the Losers find themselves in similar positions, exhausted after a long day of graduation ceremonies, celebrations, and their own after-party, lounging out as much as possible in their underground hideaway that has only become more cramped as they grew. A collection of bottles, both empty and almost so, litter the floor.

“You asking if I’ll still respect you in the morning, Haystack?” Richie cracks from his precarious perch in the hammock, overlong legs hanging out of either side and threatening to tip him out onto the floor. Eddie, his back against one of the hammock’s posts, smacks at Richie behind him.

“Of course we will,” Beverly says, ignoring Richie’s comment. “Losers stick together, right? We’ve been through too much together to just, like, stop.” A chorus of similar sentiment rings out across the room. 

“It’s just,” Ben starts again, “We’re all going to be so far apart.”

“I’ll still be here,” shrugs Mike, “for a little while, at least.”

“Anyway,” Bill chimes in, “we’ll all come see each other at r-reunions? Right?” Richie blows a raspberry as that.

“Who the fuck goes to class reunions?” he asks. 

“The hell’s the matter with that?” Eddie asks back, for the sake of arguing, “It would be interesting enough just to see what happened to the people we don’t like.” Stan shrugs from his place across the room.

“My dad always says that at the five and ten years everyone is exactly the same. But like, more pregnant. So.”

“Ha, I can’t wait to see Greta Keene’s water break in the middle of the dance floor, it’ll be just like junior prom all over again,” Richie laughs. 

“I mean, what does it matter if we’re all gonna keep it touch?” Stan asks, fidgeting with a bottle cap. Mike pipes up:

“I dunno guys, maybe we could all really, really reunite for a later one? The fifteenth?”

“Hm, maybe, but who knows where we’ll be then?” Beverly considers, combing her hand through her now long-day-greasy hair.

“How about we start trying at the fifteenth, but plan for the next one after that? Like if it doesn’t work out?” suggests Ben, turning his head to gaze at Beverly’s attempt to tame her hair.

“Yeah, until we put it off ‘til we’re all dead,” Stan says, flicking the bottle cap at Richie from across the room. He thrashes his arms around to try and hit it out of the air and succeeds in upturning himself out of the hammock and onto Eddie.

“Watch it, asshole, you’re gonna fuck up my back.” Eddie snaps, and Richie sticks his tongue out at him, rearranging himself to lay back down with Eddie’s lap as a pillow. Eddie grumbles, but doesn’t move. 

“Or until it’s just Mike left dancing alone in the gym to Cindi Lauper,” Richie continues the interrupted conversation. 

“Wait, why’s Mike the last one left alive?” asks Eddie, offended. 

“Just seems correct. Why? Did you think it’d be you? You’ll drop dead of a fucking ulcer aneurysm by the time you’re thirty, Eds.” 

“Hey, eat shit! That’s not even a real thing. Anyway, don’t expect to be invited to my funeral.”

“Sick, I’ve always wanted to crash a funeral.” They start slapping at each other without getting up. 

“Beep beep, Richie,” Mike intervenes. “How about the twenty fifth. That’s a whole quarter of a century from now, everyone would have to be _ way _ different by then. We gotta go to that one.”

“We’ll all be old as sh-shit then,” Bill points out.

“Afraid your looks will fade?” Beverly teases. Ben coughs and rolls over on the floor. 

“No,” Bill defends, not sounding as sure as he would have hoped. He clears his throat.

“Come on guys, then, let’s p-promise. We’ll all definitely come back for the twenty-fifth,” he decides. And, since Bill decides, the rest of the group finds themselves compelled to decide as well. A chorus of “yeahs,” “okays,” and “sures” echos around the room. Agreement seemingly made, the Losers continue with their quiet post-party rumination for almost a full minute before Stan breaks the silence.

“Should we make this a blood oath?”

“Christ, no? What’s wrong with you?”

“Yeah, what the fuck, Stanley?”

**DECEMBER 2019**

Richie knows the rental car is a _ choice _ . A very deliberate choice, but a _ choice _ all the same. The car rental place at the airport had had a fine selection of reasonable vehicles in their collection, and Richie could have very easily rolled into Derry after twenty-five years in a very respectable Honda Civic, or Hyundai Elantra, or maybe a Chevy Malibu, if he’s feeling frisky. But, when he had seen the pure obnoxious glory of the cherry red luxury convertible, he really had no choice but to get it, even if it is witch-tit-steel-bra freezing outside and the chances of getting to have the car actually convert are slim-to-none. Charge the card, fuck the expense, and forget the insurance, really, because he was only going to have the thing for, like, a _ day _ and because his manager is already pissed at him, so he might as well. Or was _ he _pissed at his manager? He can’t remember exactly, but both possibilities are equally likely and there’s a lot of room for overlap. 

In any case, he does suppose that Good Ol’ Steve (who, only three years older than Richie himself, has asked him to please stop calling him Good Ol’ Steve) has some kind of right to be, like, _annoyed_ at him, if only because Richie had surprised Steve with the news of Richie’s sudden trip approximately ten hours ago, in a text message from his last minute first class seat before turning his phone off completely. He had got an earful when he turned it back on during his layover in Philadelphia, about how _he_ _can’t just do this_, and _he had things on his schedule today, _and _this, Richard, this is why we never worked out, Jesus Fucking Christ. _

“I swear to fucking god, Tozier, if you don’t get your ass back by Monday we’re gonna be taking a look at your contract. You know what’s riding with this tour and you aren’t even trying to sell it. I know you know you had a taping for _ The Late Late Show _ this afternoon that you no-showed,” Steve had lectured, leading to Richie rolling his eyes like a teenager and saying, according _ Entertainment Weekly _, that “James Corden can eat [his] asshole” far too loudly for a crowded airport terminal. Richie had shrugged off that potential burned bridge and turned his phone back off before losing himself in a room temperature Cinnabon.

Hours later, on the boring-ass drive from Bangor to Derry, he turns his phone back on, pleased to see that Steve has, apparently, given up. At this point he knows pretty well that Steve’s bluffing when it comes to ending his contract. If their professional relationship could withstand their disastrous attempt at a fling turned romantic relationship a decade previous and the fallout of his last tour, then it could easily withstand the apparent tantrum that Richie finds himself throwing. Which, thank _ god, _because Richie is not in the mood to try and find a new manager who doesn’t know his whole… everything. Managers are like therapists; it’s a bitch-and-a-half to fill a new one in on all your old shit. 

In his defense, he _ also _ hadn’t expected to be in Maine today, but then _ Mike Hanlon _ called the day before saying _ something _ about some kind of promise, and a reunion, and that everyone else had already agreed to come. He had explained that he had tried to reach him on social media, like everyone else, but that his pages seemed to be strictly professional. _ Yeah, _ he almost said, _ I don’t even write my own jokes, you expect me to run my social media? I have to laugh _. He had instead inquired over an earlier part of the conversation.

“Wait, everyone else already agreed?” he had asked. 

“Yeah, everyone.” Richie could _ hear _ the smile on Mike’s face.

“Even Stan?” Richie had asked, a little incredulous.

“Even Stan.” Richie thought for a second.

“Even—“

“Eddie said he’d be there.” He had actually been trying to ask about Beverly, but _ okay. _ Yeah, Richie likes the confirmation that Eddie would be there, that Eddie’s, like, _ alive. _ Not that he was worried that Eddie had died or anything. Sure, Richie hasn’t talked to the man in years (and years and years) but he’s pretty sure he’d have found out if Kaspbrak kicked it. 

“Ha, wow. Really getting the gang back together, huh?” It’s completely out of fucking nowhere, because:

1\. Richie didn’t even realize it had been twenty-five years since he left high school, when did he get so goddamn _ old _and

2\. He’d assumed that everyone lost touch with each other as much as he had.

Like, did everyone else stick together except him? Or did everyone just decide to drop everything and run off back home to cha cha slide around a high school gym for an evening? Who even does that?

Richie considered what his schedule looks like (busy, he’s got a tour to kick off) and how his last few months have been (busy, he had a script to rehearse into sounding convincing for said tour kick-off) and said: “Yeah, sure, man, I’ll be there.” 

They had said their goodbyes and Richie tossed his phone across his sofa. “I need a vacation,” he had said in a perfect (to himself, anyway) Arnold impression, and it echoed back to him in his empty condo. Pleased with himself, he threw himself down across the sofa too, reaching back over for his phone to buy the first ticket out of LAX towards Bangor. 

It’s after seven before he pulls into the pothole minefield parking lot of Derry Township High School and swings open the door to the rental car to climb out of it, realizing it’s kind of too close to the ground for his long legs and shitty knees. Out of the car, he kneels down to surreptitiously primp himself in the side mirror. He looks fine, dressed nicely if a little rumpled. A lot rumpled. He looks like a human wrinkle. He’s probably not going to turn any heads, but he’s also not looking to impress anybody here. He really isn’t, he doesn’t think he’s turned heads for a positive reason in his life, why start now? He looks around and straightens (or tries, anyway) his jacket before easing his way toward the front door of the school, all decorated with balloons and streamers in the school’s colors. 

According to Mike’s phone call, the Losers were all meeting up in the hallway just off the lobby, where Bill’s senior year locker had been. Richie takes a deep breath as he enters the lobby and checks in with the unknown teens working reception, grabbing his name tag and hoping no one asks him any questions. He heads down the hall and around the right corner, coming head on into a group of faces he had seen too little of over the last… forever. 

“Whazzzzzuup?” He greets, obnoxiously. Beverly’s face lights up across the small circle of friends and she runs to hug him. He accepts her gratefully, laughing as he wraps his arms around her. He glances up at the rest of the group, and asks, mock offended, whether or not they thought he was worth hugging. Mike, Bill, and Ben (_ Holy shit? Is that really Ben? What the fuck? What the fuck? Why didn’t _ I _ get hot?) _roll their eyes and move to join in. One figure hangs back, however, and once the hug breaks up, Richie takes a second to look him up and down, getting a good look at what the last quarter century had done to Eddie Kaspbrak. 

The man looks fucking exhausted. Which isn’t surprising, if he has been half as neurotic in his adult life as he had as a kid, he’s had a stressful go of things. But it’s him alright, a little worn with age, but he’s still got those big brown eyes, and freckles, and fucking _ dimples _and Richie feels the deep, long-dormant urge to bolt forward and pinch his cheeks. He’s, predictably, not very tall, but he looks crisp and clean in his suit, making Richie feel decidedly schlubby in his not un-creased blazer. It feels like it’s been roughly four hundred years since Richie’s seen him (it’s been twenty four years and three months, but who’s counting?), but, still, he’s kind of ecstatic over it.

“Well, well, well,” he says, grinning, “if it isn’t little Eddie Spaghetti. It’s been too long.” Eddie conspicuously looks Richie up and down.

“You look like shit.” 

“It’s good to see you too, Eds. Glad you’ve mellowed out in your old age.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean, fuckface? And don’t call me that, you fucking _ know I—“ _Eddie storms forward and Richie cuts him off by pulling Eddie into a hug all of his own. Eddie tenses for a moment before visibly relaxing and reciprocating the hug.

“I _ did _ miss you, you know.”

“Yeah, well, whose fault is that—“

“Almost as much as I missed your mom.” Richie grins as Eddie wriggles out of his grasp, practically hissing. He takes a step back and surveys the group. Something’s missing.

“Hey. Where’s Stan?” Richie asks. Bill shrugs.

“We don’t know.”

“We thought you might know,” Mike says, “You guys kept in touch right?” Sort of, Richie and Stan catch up from time to time, but that’s mostly just because Stanley’s the kind of guy who can go six months without speaking to you and then pick it right back up where you left off. He knows he’s talked to Stan in the past year, although he doesn’t remember exactly when.

“Kind of,” Richie says. “Maybe he’s late?”

“You were already late,” Eddie says, “Stan’s not gonna get here later than you did.” Richie pulls his phone out of his back pocket.

“I can give him a call?” The rest of the Losers nod and Richie pops into Stan’s contact and turns on the speakerphone. The line rings three and a half times before someone picks it up.

“Richie?” A tension Richie had not noticed building between the six of them drops with the sound of Stan’s voice on the phone. 

“Stan the Man! Why the fuck aren’t you here?”

“Aren’t I where?” Stan asks, confused.

“Uh, the reunion? Mike said you said you were in?” There’s a pause on the other side of the line before Stan speaks again.

“Oh, right, that. Yeah, I lied,” Stan says. Mike opens his hands in a “What The Hell, Stan” gesture.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, Richie, it turns out I have better things to do than hang around a gymatorium with a bunch of people I knew in high school. No offense.”

“Full offense! Get your ass to Maine, you’re literally the only one of us not here.” Richie glances back up at the group. They are all intently looking towards him and the phone. 

“Get my ass to—? Listen. Sad as I am to miss out, I’m not even in the country right now.”

“Wait. Where are you?”

“Buenos Aires.” 

“Argentina? The fuck are you doing in Argentina, Stan, hunting nazis?” Richie asks.

“My wife and I are on vacation.” Stan offers no further explanation.

“What? Why?” Stan sighs, sounding more beleaguered than Richie would think someone on vacation would sound. 

“Because it’s December, Richie, I don’t want to do winter this year. Especially not in Maine. Also because Pat and I wanted to. Why am I explaining myself to you?”

“But, we miss you,” Richie tries. Someone in the group let’s out an “awww” but he isn’t sure who it is. His money is on Ben. Richie can almost hear Stan’s eyes roll over the phone, but his voice is a bit softer the next time he speaks.

“I miss you too. All of you. But I’m not going to be there. Obviously. So go enjoy your little high school party.” That’s all Stan cares to say about that, so Richie passes his phone around so everyone can say “hi” and they bid Stan a good vacation, even if he has made their reunion less complete. Richie pockets his phone.

“Whelp,” he says, “in that case, let’s call this meeting of the Losers Club to order?”

“To the gym?” Ben asks.

“To the gym,” Bill decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heya folks. i also can't believe i've done this. this thing is more-or-less fully written (with the exception of some continued editing on the back-half) so it'll be updating pretty regularly 
> 
> title from the song of the same name by laura stevenson


	2. Does It Suck in Here, Or Is It Just Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nah, I'm Pretty Sure It Sucks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just shattered a wine glass in my kitchen, so at risk of my night getting more annoying, here's chapter two ahead of schedge

Richie runs ahead of the group and kicks open the double doors to the school’s gym/auditorium, leading them into the room with a literal bang. The small crowd that makes up the rest of their graduating class turns their way from their places milling about the room, attention fully drawn by Richie’s antics. He expertly ignores their gazes like he does the gazes of the paparazzi (he may be a C-list celebrity, but “celebrity” _ is _ still in the name) and scans the room taking in the decor and refreshment options as he and the other Losers set themselves up at one of the many empty tables closer to the back of the room. The theme that the organizing committee seems to have agreed upon is “Just Crepe Paper Everywhere” and they are _ killing it _ because crepe paper is _ everywhere. _Richie gasps out loud when his eyes catch on an on honest-to-god punchbowl. 

“I’m gonna spike the punch,” he says, moving to get up. He’s stopped when someone grabs ahold of his elbow, half standing with him. He turns half around to see who’s just put a damper on his fun to see that it’s _ suprise! _Professional Fun Damperer Eddie Kaspbrak. Richie doesn’t actually know what Eddie even does for work now, but a professional party pooper position is as believable as any other potential fun-sucking option.

“There’s already a cash bar,” Eddie says. Richie shrugs.

“Uh, yeah? Where did you think I was gonna get the stuff to spike the punch?” Richie finds himself then subjected to a lecture on the health and safety concerns of spiking punch, and the ethical implications of making people drink alcohol on accident, and, overall, it makes Richie feel kind of shitty for something he hadn’t even been really serious about. Even so, he can’t help but notice a little thrill in the pit of his stomach at having Eddie’s attention fully on him, even if it was to tell him off. Richie looks Eddie in the face, looks at the fire in his eyes at getting to make a point. 

The lecture is near verbatim, he recognizes, to a similar talking-to Eddie gave him at their senior prom, the one they went stag to but took off early together once they got bored of of it, instead going off to pick up burgers and talk shit in Richie’s car in the parking lot, because they’d promised Stan and his date a ride home. He can’t take his eyes off of him, but he can feel his own heart, like it’s just flipped the signs back over to “open” from “closed” on some of his deeper cockles. _ Uh oh _, he thinks, absentmindedly, but mostly ignores it. He’d expected himself to be fully over his childhood-long crush on his (former?) best friend, and the fact that it still seems to be clinging to his guts is sad (at best) and pathetic (at worst). He’s still looking at Eddie, though, remembering that there hasn’t ever been anything he loves more than watching this man bitch. Eddie trails off under Richie’s gaze. 

“What?” Eddie asks, “Is there something on my—“

“You’re right,” Richie says. 

“What?” Eddie is visibly confused, eyebrows drawing together and creasing his forehead. Richie shrugs.

“You’re right, spiking the punch is a stupid idea.” 

“A stupid, _ dangerous _ idea.” The confused look refuses to leave Eddie’s face, but he seems more taken aback than anything.

“Plus,” Richie continues, “why would I share _ any _ of my alcohol with these assholes.” He gestures with his head towards the pathetic dance floor where a small group of former classmates (townies, Richie guesses) dance around to the music, somehow all looking much older than all of their forty-three years. 

The expression on Eddie’s face drops at this, and he looks considerably less impressed, but, if Richie isn’t mistaken, he’s hiding a smile and Richie knows that Eddie knows he’s joking, because Eddie looks as relieved as he does annoyed. Eddie releases Richie’s elbow, his hand running down his arm until their fingers brush. Eddie pulls his hand back, and the light from the dance floor glitters off the ring there. Richie reaches back out and grabs back at his hand, leaning in for a closer look.

“Whoa, wait, what’s this?” he asks, “Eddie, did you get married?” Eddie pulls his hand back harder this time, slipping it deftly out of Richie’s grasp. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, fiddling with the ring on his finger. “What of it?”

“Married? What? Like to a woman?” Eddie glares back up at him, eyes colder than Richie had expected. Richie puts his hands up in defense. “Alright, alright, shit, no jokes about the wife, got it.” He glances around at the rest of the table. “Rough crowd, huh?” 

Mike saves the day by actually asking Eddie a sincere question about it and Richie finds himself annoyed at _ himself _ over how hard he has to try to not roll his eyes as Eddie rambles on and on about New York, and about Risk Assess-analyzingation, and even the sparse details Eddie gives them about Myra, Mrs. Eddie Kaspbrak herself. Richie decides that ribbing Eddie about his job is a safe bet, so he does exactly that, it going over exactly how he wanted. The conversation turns into a sort of round table with everyone filling the others in on their lives. 

Some personal accounts are more interesting than others because, even though they had all sort of lost touch, it was hard to be a living person and not know, at least vaguely, what Bill Denbrough has been up to. Richie hasn’t really read any of his books because if he wanted to hear about horrible things happening in Maine, he’d just like, go home, but he knows about them, and the movies, and that he and Bill are both in LA and they’ve not so much as met for lunch. Weird, how that happens. Bill mostly just shrugs off his explanation of his career because it’s common knowledge at this point, but they press for details about his wife who, stuck with obligations on set, couldn’t make it to this sexy little shindig. Ben talks excitedly about the building he just put up in Kansas City or Louisville or one of those other Midwest cities Richie only vaguely knows the location of. Kansas City is presumably in Kansas, but he isn’t even actually sure on that one. Mike has completely overhauled Derry’s library into something far more impressive than the town deserves. Bev has a lot to say about her new prêt-à-porter line (a term not to be mistaken, Richie learns, with where he can get a soggy sandwich in a train station) and very little to say about her pending divorce. And Richie? He has a lot to say about everyone else, filling every silence with some sort of quip, or comment, or question. If he doesn’t offer up much about himself, it’s simply because he’s up to a whole bunch of top secret stuff and he’s strangled to silence by a legion of non-disclosure agreements. 

“What have _ you _ been up to, Rich?” Bill asks, after Richie inquires again over some minor detail about his life. Richie shrugs.

“Oh, you know. Living the dream. Killing the dream. Making the dream my bitch.” He grins, wriggling his eyebrows and taking sip of his drink for effect. Beverly says she’s seen his newest special, and that it was “interesting,” which, compared to the general critical consensus over it, is incredibly generous of her. Richie tells her about how he’s been in talks with Netflix about filming and releasing one for his coming tour (the talks have been “No, we will not give you a new special,” but his friends don’t need to know that). It seems like the conversation is moving on from him, and, relieved, Richie starts sipping again at his shitty beer. 

“How’s the girlfriend?” Eddie asks, and Richie chokes as the watery beer enters his lungs instead of his stomach. 

“Guh?” he says, and falls into a coughing fit. Eddie puts his arm across Richie’s back, seemingly trying to stabilize him but only succeeding in further deepening Richie’s distress.

When he finally gets his shit together, he wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his blazer, sending Eddie recoiling away from him. 

“What,” he starts again, “What girlfriend? There’s no girlfriend?” That crease reappears on Eddie’s forehead and Richie’s sure that the man’s eyebrows are just going to fuse together if he keeps furrowing them so much.

“What?” Eddie asks, “It’s just— in your special you said—“

“Aww, Eds, you watched my special?”

“No, asshole, it just, like, Netflix’s stupid autoplay got me and I didn’t turn it off.”

“Aww, Eds! You watched my special!” Eddie moves to further the argument, but Bev jumps in front of the potential verbal train wreck, announcing that it is very important that she begin dancing as soon as possible, lest there be some (very vague, but somehow still threatening) consequences. Richie hops out of his chair, and gets down on one knee before her, offering his hand.

“May I have this dance?” he asks, Alfred Pennyworth impression in full force. Beverly looks down at him in a jokingly (he hopes, at least) pitying way. Beverly gently lays her hand upon his and he loosely grasps it, leading them away from the Losers’ table and towards the dance floor, where they moderately succeed at waltzing to the song about the apple bottom jeans and the reeboks with the stripes. Richie lets Beverly spin him and he falls dramatically into a dip, almost losing balance and sending himself careening into the gym floor. The combined effort of his quick moving legs and Bev’s surprisingly firm grip keeps him from knocking himself unconscious twenty minutes into what maybe the lamest party he’s ever been to, and he’s been to a _ lot _ of dull-ass after parties. He’s not even sure if he recognizes anybody here other than his immediate friends. Did he even really know that many people when he was in high school? He’s not sure. At the risk of sounding like an after school special, or, even worse, an episode of _Degrassi_ (Richie will admit he was gainfully unemployed for most of 2005; where there is free time there is Canadian teen drama), he doesn’t think he had much need to reach outside of their friend-group, what with how well they meshed together. He imagines that shared trauma has something to do with that. No one’s said anything about it so far tonight, but he figures that the whole “helped bust the child murderer janitor in middle school” thing is something he’s barely mentioned to his therapist, let alone actually, like, coped with, so maybe it isn’t the best thing to bring up when they’re _ trying _ to have a good time.

“Looks like you’ve still got the moves, Molly Ringwald,” Richie shouts over the music and Beverly laughs. The heavy beats of the top hits of the early aughts fade out and a slow song starts up, prompting Bev and Richie to immediately flow into the timeless middle school slow dance position. She smiles up at him.

“This is really weird, huh?” she asks. Richie chuckles.

“What? Being back here or dancing with me?” 

“The first one. Although...” she jokes, but sighs before continuing. “I really did think we all would have, I don’t know, kept tabs on each other better than we did, at least. Like, we’re all here now, and it feels like we’re trying to act like it hasn’t been decades since most have us have so much as spoken to each other. Like we aren’t strangers now.”

“We’re not— we’re not strangers. We all just sort of took an extended sabbatical from each other.”

“Aren’t we, though? Tell me one thing I know about you that’s I didn’t learn when we were kids or from one of your comedy specials.” 

“Ehh,” Richie coughs out, “You’re really not gonna learn too much about me from my shows anyway.” She looks at him expectantly and he elaborates, “I don’t write my own shit, Bev, none of that’s me.”

“Oh,” she says, but she doesn’t look surprised. 

“I mean, I tried my own stuff, in the beginning, yeah. But the, uh, the climate wasn’t right for what I was trying to sell. Lotta personal stuff, childhood stuff.”

“About—?” Bev prompts and he nods, cutting her off. 

“It turns out,” he says, “it turns out that accidentally ending up an active participant in busting your unfriendly neighborhood school janitor slash kid murderer when you’re like, twelve, is kind of a ‘you had to be there’ thing. Like, I’m just out here trying to make my own trauma funny, and meanwhile I got people telling me that ‘it was all very Freddie Krueger meets John Wayne Gacy’ isn’t a punchline,” he rolls his eyes. “I mean, there were other, uh, things, but the long and short is that no one was buying what I was selling.” Beverly nods along and the slow song fades out. A faster song starts up but they don’t stop swaying slowly through their conversation.

“What happened then?” she asks. Richie takes a deep breath before continuing.

“Basically I was notoriously sucking it up _ hard _ until this guy comes up to me one night, says he’s with this agency and he says, he says to me,” he puts on a thick Dustin Hoffman _Midnight Cowboy_ New York accent that this man absolutely did not have, “‘Hey, kid! I like ya spunk, how do ya feel about a little collaboration?’ And the rest, as they say, is history.” She’s looking at him with something akin to pity, but not pity itself. A cousin to pity. Sympathy? The word might be sympathy? He knows he didn’t tell Bev the whole, whole story, but it’s still more than he’s told anyone outside a counseling office. 

“You can tell the gang, if you want,” he says, “I don’t really care, and I doubt my fans even would at this point. Hey, maybe Eds’ll get a kick out of it.” He shrugs at her and starts to consider whether or not they should head back to the table when Beverly blurts out:

“I don’t know where I’m going after this.” Richie isn’t sure what that means, so he says:

“The hotel, right? We’re all staying the same place, aren’t we?” Bev shakes her head.

“No. I mean, yes, we are, but,” she pauses to organize what she’s saying, “I mean after this weekend. I have all my stuff with me—that I could carry—back at the hotel. I’m— I can't go home. I’m not going home.”

“I thought you were getting divorced?” Richie runs a hand through his hair.

“I am,” Bev explains, “my husband just doesn’t know that yet. I knew it’s best if I—if I’m not near him when I do this.” Richie wants to hug her at this, so he starts to gesture the idea of a hug, asking permission by just sort of moving his arms around. When Bev nods he pulls her in tight.

“Christ.” He feels her nod against him. “I can’t believe I made you listen to me bitch about show business when you were sitting on _ that _.” She shoves at him, playfully. “Thanks for, uh, telling me. It must be really scary, dropping everything like that.”

“Oh, it’s fucking terrifying,” she says. “I feel like I’m just... running away from all of it, but... I think that’s okay. Running away from something if hurts you. Running towards something better.” He’s not sure what to say to that, but he nods.

“You wanna get out of here?” he asks and she takes a step away from him to look at him incredulously and he loses his shit. 

“I,” he starts, but has to catch his breath from laughing, “I meant, like, all of us.” His voice grows softer. “You deserve to have fun tonight. And this party sucks ass.” Beverly lets out a huge sigh of relief, laughing all the way, and Richie is almost offended, but she nods and he’s glad that he’s apparently come up with a Good Idea. She turns to leave the dance floor and Richie stops her with a soft call of her name. She glances back over her shoulder at him.

“Thanks for that, really,” he says. “There’s... there’s something else I want to tell you. All of you. Not right now, I don’t think. But. Later maybe?” She smiles at him, nodding, and loosely grasps back on to his arm.

They make their way back to the table and it only takes a few words from Beverly to get both Ben and Bill on board. At that point, Mike and Eddie find themselves joining in, because whatever Beverly and Richie seem to be planning has got to be better than the sad show this reunion is turning out to be.


	3. I Mean, Yeah, Man

Richie is drunk in a Chinese restaurant. Comfortably drunk, not _ wasted _ by any means, because he’s in his forties and because he has a plane to catch in the morning. Although, considering the snow piling up outside, that plan seems to be growing less and less likely. 

The “Oh My God, It’s Been a Quarter Century” Losers gathering has kicked itself into full swing. After retreating from the depressing mess that the reunion turned out to be, with all its cheap DJs and likely wastefully expensive, overly intricate “Class of 1994” gobos, they got themselves seated in one of the private party rooms, setting up camp around the spacious table. There’s an extra chair left over, one that Stan could have occupied, and Mike filled it by tying a balloon (taken as a party favor from the gym’s ample supply) and drawing a very Stan-esque smiley face. The likeness is uncanny. Richie takes a quick picture of it and sends it Stan’s way. He doesn’t get a response, but he bets it’s still appreciated. He had begun the meal constantly putting his arm around the Stan Chair as if someone was actually sat there, but he found himself moving into the chair itself when Eddie (tipsily, of course, although it could have just as easily happened while sober) challenged Richie to an arm wrestling competition he was going to lose. 

“God,” Bill says, after downing a shot of _ something _ which he then chased with a bite of a shrimp eggroll, “I’m really sorry Audra couldn’t m-make it. I wanted her to meet you all. I think you g-guys would really like her.” Mike grins.

“Of course we would,” he says, “if she’s good enough for Big Bill she’s more than good enough for the rest of us.”

“I guess it works out,” Bill goes on, “she’d be the only significant other, I’d be a little w-worried that she’d feel out of, of place.” He shrugs in Eddie’s direction. “So,” he starts again, “Myra couldn’t make it either?”

Eddie clears his throat, then seems to be disgusted with what his throat was cleared of and grabs for a napkin. “Um,” he says, “No, she just— she’s— She’s not a big, uh, traveler. I thought she probably wouldn’t be interested.” Bill looks confused and the table’s attention as a whole is drawn towards Eddie as he explains, or, at least, tries to.

“She didn’t even want to come?” Bill asks.

“I didn’t think she would, no.” Eddie shrugs. Ben reaches across the table to pull some sweet and sour sauce his way.

“You did ask her, right?” Ben inquires and Eddie shifts in his seat, hackles rising. He shrugs again, firmer this time. Richie finds himself leaning a bit nearer to him, scooting the Stan Chair ever so closer. He isn’t sure what it is exactly, but there’s just something about an Irritated Eddie that draws him in like a particularly prickly magnet. 

“What?” Eddie asks, defensive, “You, uh, you know how it is.” He sips his drink. “Sometimes you just gotta get away from the wife. Right, Bill?” Eddie glances in his direction but Bill is frowning.

“I love my wife very much, Eddie.” 

He looks almost offended and Eddie shifts his eyes away from Bill. He bites at his thumbnail, a habit that Richie always found charmingly ironic for a total germaphobe like his Eds Spagheds.

Well. Not _ his, _ but Richie’s drunk enough to allow himself a little bit of whimsy. And they’re _ all _ his, really, as much as he’s all theirs. His people, his friends, his Losers. He’s been barely been back in his hometown, but it so strangely feels like he never left. Well, never left in a good way, where he got to shake off the bad parts and keep only the love. It hasn’t taken him twenty-five years to realize, but it hits him again as it does often, just how fucking lonely he is. How lonely he has been. It’s overwhelming to be reminded that it wasn’t always like that.

Eddie is a little flustered from Bill’s response and all Richie can think about is touching his face. Well, touching a lot of him, but the face is generally a good starting point. Which. Richie knows that drinking does this to him, what with all the lowered inhibitions, but he doesn’t know if he’s ever had such specific wants towards a specific someone, especially when only a _ comfortable _ amount of drinks in. There are a lot of rabbit holes regarding Eddie that Richie could very easily tumble down, all of them embarrassing, but in different flavors. When did he become such an affectionate drunk?

He doesn’t realize he’s been staring at Eddie until the man levels his gaze at him.

“What?” Richie asks, and Eddie barks out a laugh.

“What?’ he asks back. “You’re the one staring at me. You’re being weird.”

“I’m being weird?”

“Yes. All night. You’ve been…”

“Weird?”

“Yes.” Eddie doesn’t elaborate any, so Richie asks him to.

“Just, like, weird.” Eddie doesn’t elaborate at all. Richie shakes his head, eyes rolling, and Eddie rolls his right back. It’s cute, and Richie is overcome. He loves. He loves. He loves all these people _ so much_. Whelp.

“You just reminded me of something,” he tells Eddie and starts to rise up out of his chair, banging a soup spoon off the side of a bottle of beer, like he’s about to make a toast at a champagne-free wedding. He loses his balance a bit as he rises too fast and has to grab onto the backrest of Eddie’s chair to right himself. Yeesh, he had known he probably needed to be drunk for this, but he might have overshot it a bit. He clears his throat.

“I have an announcement to make, please hold your applause,” he starts, and the rest of the table watch him patiently. “Now, this may come as a surprise from a notable womanizer such as myself, but the fact of th—“

“Oh my god,” Ben interrupts, “Richie, are you getting married?” There’s commotion around the table and Richie lets out a piercing bark of laughter.

“Yes, yes, that’s it,” he says, making a show of clasping his hands to his heart, “and I hope you will all join us as I finally make an honest woman out of Eddie’s mom.” The joke’s a hit, and Richie wants to pat himself on the back, even if he did inadvertently sidetrack himself away from the entire point of standing up. The laughter dies down, and Eddie says:

“The woman’s dead, asshole.”

There’s no real fire in his voice, as far as Richie can tell, but it does cut off completely any remaining laughter.

“Oh,” Richie says, and, once actually looking down at Eddie, he doesn’t seem angry either, outside of the general mask of irritation that Richie considers synonymous with Eddie’s face. It’s just... weird. Why is everything so goddamn weird tonight? Richie starts to sit down, but Eddie speaks again.

“So, what? Do you really have an announcement or did you just wanna toast to fucking my dead mom?” The very bad part of Richie’s brain (the Anti-Vulnerability Wisecrack Factory, est. 1976) starts formulating something _ hilarious _ he can say in response to that but he fights against the urge to make this _ all _ for a laugh.

Right. This. This this this. Okay, so, it’s not like this is anything new to him, exactly. He’s had the time to come to terms with himself as a person, been there, done that, cried in the shower, et cetera, et cetera, et fucking cetera. And it’s not really like he’s still feeling it out, like, well, yeah, he didn’t get his shit figured out in high school but who does, really? Life ain’t an episode of _ Glee_, baby, he can’t just sing a top forty hit and reach self actualization. 

He _ did _ have it figured out by his mid twenties but at that point he’d somehow found himself with a _ brand _ to maintain and an _ image _ all freshly curated. And so, it’s not the knowing that’s the problem, but the actual saying of the thing that gets him. Or even the specific thinking of the thing. Richie is allowed to _ be, _but only kind of, and only out of the eyesight of the asshole that is the public sphere.

There’s a distinct divide between Real Richie and Stage Richie and Stage Richie fucking sucks, man, but Stage Richie is also the one who has to go on tour next week. Who_ gets_ to go on tour next week.

This whole _ thing _ is a _ Star Wars _ script and his guarantee of a stable career is Kathleen Kennedy. It exists, and some people know, but you won’t see anyone talking about the specifics, lest they face some vague consequence. But if you know, you _ know. _ It’s all very Tab Hunter. Richie clears his throat. He feels much more sober than he had forty-five seconds ago.

“Right. There is actually something I wanna tell you all. It’s a little, uh, hush hush, but you all managed to keep my torrid affair with the, uh, the late Sonia Kaspbrak under wraps, so I think I can trust you guys. I can trust you guys.” He coughs, and grabs a glass of water off the table, draining it. “Haha, wow, um. Anyway. Yeah. I’m, uhh. Whew boy. So, um, I’m gay?” It comes out (ha) sounding a bit like a question, but it’s out there. So, yeah.

“So, yeah,” he says. He nervously glances around the table watching as everyone seems to process what he’s said. There’s a bit of nodding. Ben, seemingly unsure of what to do exactly, starts clapping and the rest of the Losers slowly, _ weirdly _ join in. 

“Okay, don’t— don’t clap, it’s so weird that you’re clapping right now, why are you all clapping right now.” Richie glances down at Eddie and sees him also clapping along. He seems to be staring more into the middle distance than looking at anything in particular, and he’s certainly not looking at Richie.

“Whelp,” Richie looks back up, “on that note, I’m gonna run to the bathroom before I shit myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: upon actual research, "class of whatever" gobos actually aren't that pricy at all and i just live under the assumption that all lighting accessories cost a fortune


	4. Record Scratch

Contrary to his claim, Richie only fast-walks to the restroom so he can stare at himself in the mirror until he calms the fuck down. He washes his hands a couple of times, just to feel how nice the warm water is on his skin, while he tries to focus on getting his nerves under check. While he doesn’t throw up (and he is very proud of himself for this) he does dry heave twice into the sink. He’s also grateful that this restaurant is small enough to only have single stall restrooms, so he’s at no risk of someone walking in on this sad display. He should feel good, and he does. He does. But it’s just, ugh, _ weird _. 

He’s washing his hands for a third and final time (he’s getting pruney and honestly doesn’t love it) when he hears a firm couple of knocks on the door. He quickly dries his hands off, running them under one of those air blower things that Eddie’s always hated (“They’re just blowing all the dirty ass water from other people’s shitty hands all over me, like why even wash my hands if I’m going to then essentially stick them right back in the fucking toilet? It’s like you _ want _ E. coli.”). Peeking his head out of the door, he finds Bill on the other side, hand raised as if to knock again. Richie slips out of the crack he opened and shuts it again behind him.

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hey,” Bill says. “You doing alright?” Richie nods a little too vigorously.

“Yeah, stellar,” he shrugs. “The, uh, room got a little too sentimental for me, y’know, had to take a minute to recalibrate.” Bill’s still frowning.

“You were gone for l-like twenty minutes.” Hm. Not great. He would make like Jamie Foxx and Blame It on the Alcohol (a-a-a-a-alcohol), but, thinking back, he’s not really drank that much in the last hour and he can feel himself sobering up as sure as he can feel the beginnings of the headache he guesses he deserves. 

“This p-place is gonna close, so we were gonna head back to the, the hotel. Turn in for the night. The weather’s looking pretty shitty. You probably don’t want to try to drive in it, especially in that hotrod you g-got out there.”

“Hotrod?”

“I c-can’t think of a better word for that thing, Rich.” Fair enough. “Anyway, Mike and I are gonna try and g-get some supplies at the convenience store or something before the weather gets w-worse. You can tag along with Eddie back to the hotel.”

“Where are Ben and Bev?”

“Took off already. You were in the restroom a long time, m-man.”

“Oh. Okay, yeah,” Richie says. Bill claps him on the shoulder, leaning in closer.

“I really am proud of you, y’know.” Richie smiles, a little tense, and waves Bill and Mike out the door, following closely after them. Eddie is stood immediately outside of the restaurant, just to the left side of the door and all bundled up in his big, winter coat, scarf, and hat. He isn’t wearing gloves, which is scandalous. It isn’t _ that _ cold out, but it is snowing pretty heavily and Eddie looks far more comfortable than Richie feels in his thin jacket. Richie can’t remember if he even packed a coat, but that’s just California living, baby. 

“You my Uber for the night?” he asks, sidling up to Eddie. He wants to bump shoulders with him but doesn’t.

“Oh, so you’re paying me?” Richie grins at him, and follows as Eddie leads him across the parking lot. They come to a stop in front of a Big Fuck Off Cadillac and Richie stares in awe as Eddie clicks to unlock it and swings himself into the driver’s seat. Twenty-plus years in LA means that Richie has seen more than his fair share of Big Fuck Off Vehicles (it comes with the territory, larger than life people _ need _ larger than life rides, or something, although Richie has a running theory that at least a few certain celebrities get off on the carbon emissions, like a global-scale choke-and-stroke) but this one might be the Biggest and Fuck Off-iest if only because _ Eddie _ is driving it. Richie stifles his giggles and climbs into the passenger seat. He’s never been good at maintaining composure (there are multiple reasons that SNL never worked out, but that was a big one) so his poorly concealed laughter draws Eddie’s attention pretty quickly. 

Eddie stops triple checking his mirrors and looks at him.

“What?” He looks suspicious, like he’s holding his breath over whatever Richie’s going to say.

“Big car.” 

“Do you have something to say about my big car?” Eddie lets his breath out in a sigh.

“Nope.”

Eddie goes back to adjusting his mirrors (_Is this not his car? Are these things not already set? Does he think someone broke into his car just to fuck with his sideviews?) _but stops again when Richie continues.

“Except that—” Richie starts.

“Except what? Except ‘how do I reach the pedals?’ Except ‘did it come with a booster seat?’”

“I was maybe gonna go for an overcompensation joke.” Eddie huffs and, after an apparent eternity, actually turns the vehicle on.

“Uncreative, even for you, Trashmouth,” he says, and Richie throws his head back against the headrest.

“That’s me.” Neither of them speak as Eddie backs out of the parking space, double checking every blind spot as he reverses in the almost entirely empty parking lot. Somewhere on the dashboard an alert starts going off with a piercing _ ding ding ding ding _until Eddie reaches over to smack at Richie’s arm to put his seatbelt on. Richie buckles himself in, and prepares for a long haul, because the Derry Townhouse is clear on the other side of town and Eddie is driving approximately three-and-a-half miles per hour through the snowy streets. 

There’s a tension in the car, and Richie doesn’t know what it is, and it _ sucks. _ They should at least be talking or something, and Richie _ knows _ he talked to Eddie less than anyone else tonight, so he’s got to have _ something _ to say to him.

“So, your, uh, mom died,” Richie says, at the exact same time that Eddie says:

“So, you’re, uh, gay, then.” 

They cringe in tandem as they roll up to a stoplight. Richie turns his head to look over at Eddie, who is staring straight ahead.

“Do you, uh, want to flip a coin on which of these bad conversations we’re going to have first?” Eddie takes his hands off the wheel (_ gasp! _) of the (stationary) car to shove the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, running them down his face and dropping them into his lap before placing them back in perfect ten-and-two positioning. Dramatic. They sit quiet for a few moments, both staring into the glaring red light. Richie’s just about got himself psyched up to say something when Eddie beats him to the punch.

“She died a few years ago,” he says. 

“Ah.” Richie thinks for a moment. “I’m, uh, sorry about that joke tonight.” Eddie shakes his head.

“It’s fine, that’s just what you do. And you didn’t know.” 

“And it was kinda funny,” Richie pushes. Eddie glances over at him.

“I… I really wasn’t all that torn up over it. Her. She just got sick. And we weren’t even talking at that point, but Myra kept me updated on how she was doing, so I learned everything in like a third party kind of way.” 

“Wait,” Richie scrunches his face in thought, “So you weren’t talking to your mother anymore but _ your wife _ was?”

“They were close.” 

“Yeah, but you not wanting to talk to your mom wasn’t, like, a dealbreaker between them? Like, wasn’t that,” Richie stops himself from saying _ weird _, “uncomfortable? How does that even happen?” Eddie taps his fingers against the steering wheel, still looking forward at the still-red light. 

“They have a lot in common. Had. They just liked to help each other take care of me, alright? So they bonded over that.”

“…Over taking care of you?” Richie grimaces, he’s getting bad taste in his mouth. Whether it’s from the drinking or the conversation, he’s not sure. “Hey, Eds, not to get all psychoanalytical on this commute but—“

“Shut the fuck up, Richie.”

“Right.” The light is still red and Richie is beginning to wonder if maybe it’s broken. They could probably just cross the intersection regardless, it’s not like there were other drivers out.

“Did you plan that, for tonight? The whole. That?” Eddie changes the subject, not turning to look at Richie. Eddie seems uneasy with even saying the word “gay” out loud, which Richie, like, gets, but still finds himself annoyed by it. He considers playing dumb and forcing Eddie to be more specific about what he’s asking but ultimately decides against it. 

“Not really,” he says. “I just realized I wanted people to know who weren’t just people I’ve slept with, and, like, the woman who does my PR.” He laughs. “And Stan.” Eddie actually looks at him at that.

“Stan already knew?” he ask. Richie raises his eyebrows at the sudden direct attention.

“Hm? Yeah. I think he’s the first person I ever told. But I think he kind of always knew, you know how he is. All those bird watching skills transfer to people watching skills or whatever.” 

“When was that?” Eddie asks, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel again, louder this time. Richie’s not sure.

“I’m not sure? I was like twenty-five, maybe? And my ghostwriter had like _ just _developed my whole schtick so I, like, got to dip a toe out of the closet just to get bribed the fuck back in, so that put the kibosh on that,” he explains. “Oh, right, I don’t write my own shit, if Bev didn’t tell you.”

“Fuckin’ knew it,” Richie hears him mumble, and Richie chuckles at his apparent vindication. 

“But it’s not like I’ve been forced into celibacy or anything. Honestly, I’m super lucky that apparently only straight dudes like my comedy. Imagine bringing along an NDA to a Grindr hookup, right?” Richie chuckles at that, but Eddie doesn’t say anything. “Um,” Richie starts again, “Grindr is the app where—“

“I know what Grindr is.”

“Alrighty.” Richie blows air through his teeth. Fuck, this is a long light.

“_ Fuck, _this is a long light,” Eddie groans, slamming his hands against the wheel. As if on cue, the light turns green and Eddie accelerates out of his stop far too quickly, sending the Big Fuck Off Cadillac sliding across the intersection. They both scream as the car glides on the small patch of ice. Richie has just enough time to think about how he never got his affairs in order, and then think about how he’s not sure what his affairs even are, before they slide to a stop about three meters away into the center of the deserted intersection. The light turns red again.

Trying to catch his breath, Richie feels around his body, taking inventory to make sure that he didn’t somehow lose part of himself in the almost accident. He glances over at Eddie, whose hands are cemented to the wheel, knuckles as white as the snow that just about killed them. The two lucky survivors lock eyes. They lose their shit.

“Oh my god,” Richie tries to catch his breath but keeps cracking up, “That was not _ Rules of the Road _compliant. You almost fucking killed us. You almost made me die in Derry, you dick.” He might be crying, he’s laughing so hard.

“My foot slipped,” Eddie tries to explain himself, but can’t quite catch his breath between giggles (and they _ are _ giggles, even at his age, Richie is pleased to see that Eddie is still a _ giggler _).

“Yeah, because you fell off the stack of phonebooks you’re sitting on, you driving hazard. I can’t believe I’m alive right now.”

“Hey, I almost made me die in Derry too, so don’t take all the pity for yourself. God, they’d bury me next to my mother, I know they would.”

“Here lies Eddiebear—“

“Oh, _ don’t _,” Eddie interrupts, but he’s still laughing.

“May we never forget him, as the Lord takes back his littlest angel. Age forty-three.” Eddie cracks back up.

There’s nothing like a near-death experience to break up tension, Richie determines. The rest of the drive to the hotel is light and easy. Somehow he and Eddie manage to find conversation topics that remain free of any _ weird _ conflict. There’s conflict, of course, because that’s just how they communicate, through ribbing and bickering. And _ god, _ it feels _ good. _It feels so much like childhood that Richie gets lightheaded, lighthearted, and brave. Brave enough that, when they return to the small hotel to find everyone else has gone to bed (“They didn’t even stay up to see if we made it back? Gee, thanks, guys.”), Richie invites Eddie up to his room for a nightcap and some long-missed conversation. 

They sit across from each other, crosslegged at the foot of the bed, with two glasses of whiskey pilfered from the unmanned bar downstairs (Eddie insisted on leaving cash behind and Richie acquiesced, both putting down more than enough, just to be safe). Their easy banter dies out after a few minutes, and they sit just sort of looking at each other. Richie’s trying to think of something specific to say, and is worried that Eddie is too. He’s dead-set on beating him to a conversation topic. He doesn’t want to talk about himself. He wants to talk about Eddie. He wants to ask more about Eddie’s mom, if only because he could tell that Eddie _ didn’t _ want to talk about it, but he wants to know. (He’s not sure how to broach the subject of dead parents appropriately. He’s not spoken to his parents in a while, but they aren’t dead, they’re just using their retirement to cruise around the gulf coast in an RV, which is kind of the same thing.) He would even ask about Myra, just to _ know _, just to know anything about Eddie’s life. (He’s also pretty sure there’s some pretty serious Trouble in Paradise going on there, and he, selfish as it may be, wants confirmation of that so strongly that he can taste it, even though he knows there’s nothing he could do about it outside of just watching it happen and feeling sick.)

“God, I fucking missed you,” he says instead. Eddie raises his eyebrows at him.

“Yeah, well, whose fault is that?” 

“You said that to me earlier, too,” he says. 

“Just,” Eddie looks down at his glass, swirling it around, letting the ice cubes clink against each other, “You kept in touch with Stan, but not with me. I always wondered why. Like, was he just easier to reach? Did you just not want to talk to me?”

“No, no, of course not,” Richie defends, but it’s not quite true. At that time, Richie was on the edge of nineteen, fresh to the west coast, and on a mission to “make it.” And, yeah, he was busy, and school was intense, and his attention is sparse to begin with, but he _ did try. _He did pretty well the first couple of months, and he reminds Eddie of this.

“I know,” Eddie says, bristling a bit, “but you just fell off the face of the planet. For me, anyway. Until I see you on some special years ago and remember, oh, hey, there’s my best friend, what the fuck?” Richie takes a long sip of his drink, heart sputtering at Eddie still considering him his best friend.

“Do you want me to get earnest here? Because this is going to be embarrassing for both of us,” he says. Eddie looks him up and down, searching for any tell that Richie’s planning to fuck with him. He must trust what he sees, because he nods. 

“Okay,” Richie says, “Here goes. God, this is just a night for vulnerability, huh? My therapist is gonna have a fucking field day when I get back to her.”

“Richie.”

“Right. Well, you know, those first couple of months we talked a lot. And Stan and I talked a lot, and I talked a bit to everyone else. So, Stan would, like, fill me in on what’s happening in his life, and, man, Stan fucking _ killed _ college, like he bloomed or some shit,” he takes another sip. “And a couple of months in, he’s telling me about this girl he met, and they really hit it off, and he really liked her, and I was so, so proud of him, Eddie. Just, so happy for him.” Eddie looks like he wants to say something, but thinks better of it. Richie continues:

“And I was so happy to hear this about Stan, and then you’d call, and I’d know you’d have stuff to fill me in on too, right? But, um, I started to get less excited about that,” Richie runs a hand through his own hair, fingers catching on a few tangles he’d acquired over his long-ass day. “That sounds bad, let me— let me explain. All that stuff Stan told me, about his new friends, his girlfriend… I was _ terrified _ you would have something like that to tell me. I’d legit have, like, nightmares where you’d show up to visit me with some girl on your arm, like ‘wake up sweaty’ nightmares about it. And there was a lot of stuff I was still coming to terms with, so I didn’t know how to actually confront any of this, or handle it maturely, or, fuck, _ delicately _. So, I just ran away from it. So if anything happened, I just wouldn’t know.” Richie watches Eddie take another sip of his drink, not breaking eye contact. 

“It was selfish,” Richie admits, rubbing at his eyes.

“Part of being nineteen,” Eddie says, and barely pauses before, “You said you were twenty-five when you, you got yourself figured out?”

“Thereabouts, yeah.” 

“And you told Stan pretty quick?”

“Pretty quick, yeah.” Eddie clears his throat and looks back down into his drink.

“I met Myra when I was twenty-six. When we,” Eddie gestures between himself and Richie, “were twenty-six.”

“Mhm.” Richie doesn’t really know where this is heading, but doesn’t want Eddie to stop talking. 

“I wish you could have told me when we were twenty-five.” 

Richie swallows hard. What does that mean? What does that _ mean _ ? _ What _ does that mean? Richie opens his mouth to ask for clarification on that, like, cryptic-ass statement, but Eddie looks like he has something else to say. Neither, however, gets to speak at all as they are interrupted by the piercing marimba of a generic iPhone ringtone blaring out of Eddie’s back pocket. 

“Fuck, I gotta take this,” Eddie says, looking at the caller ID, “I forgot to call Myra to let her know I got back to the hotel safe.” Eddie had had to make a similar phone call when they all got to the restaurant earlier and had seemed to be texting her updates sporadically through the night. Richie’s a little confused.

“Didn't you text her?” 

“I did, but she wants to hear my voice. Anybody could have texted her from my phone.”

“What, in case you got _ kidnapped? _”

Eddie shrugs at him and stands up, making his way to the door and Richie watches him cross the room. He glances back at Richie to mouth “sorry” at him as he goes to answer the call.

“Yeah, okay,” Richie clears his throat. “Tell the wifey ‘goodnight, mommy’ from me, yeah?” Eddie flips him off and slips through the door. As soon as the door shuts, Richie downs the rest of his and Eddie’s drinks, deposits the glasses less-than-gently onto the nightstand and throws himself backwards onto the bed. What the fuck was that?

“What the fuck was that,” he whispers, staring up into the popcorn ceiling as if for guidance. It doesn’t answer him, but just hangs there, quiet and ugly. 

He was right: assuming he makes it out of this weekend, his therapist is gonna have a fucking blast with this. He glances at the dusty digital clock on the nightstand. 11:04.

He calls Stan.


	5. Being Annoying to the People You Love

“What, Richie,” Stan answers, flatly. Richie presses the phone closer to his ear to hear Stan better, picking up on the background noise of wherever in paradise Stan is right now. He hears birds, mostly.

“Am I on speaker? Why is it so loud there? Did you rent one of those, uh, vacation houses that are just, like, full of loose birds? Y’know, like the one in _ Blame it on Rio _ or something?” (They’d both only seen that movie once, at Richie’s insistence, at a sleepover. Richie had heard his older sister complaining about what a “disgusting, tasteless piece of shit” it was, so he had immediately deemed it a Must See Movie and swiped the tape before she could take it back to the store, sneaking it right with him to Stan’s house. They ended that night with mutual stomachaches and a new, but not unfounded, unease towards Michael Caine.)

“No, that’s just my sound machine. For sleeping. Did you just call in the middle of the night to remind me about the worst part of Stanley Donen’s filmography or did you have something you actually needed to talk about?”

“What, I can’t call my dearest friend just to—“

“Just to catch up? You’re full of shit, Rich, you called like five hours ago and you know I’m on vacation, so get on with it. What did you fuck up?” The background noise disappears as Stan either turns off the sound machine or leaves the room.

“Did you know Eddie got married?” Silence on the other end of the line.

“Stan?”

“I’m thinking, give me a fucking minute.” 

“Thinking about what? It’s a yes or no question.”

“Thinking about why I’m still friends with you. Give me a second to organize my thoughts, not everybody lets whatever words first come to mind just fall out of their skull. In fact, most people don’t; that’s a very _ you _ problem.” Stan takes a breath. “Right. Yes, I knew. And honestly I thought you did too, it’s been like ten years. Like, I was sure you found out when it happened, I thought that’s why you started fucking around with Steve.” Richie groans, fisting his hand into his own hair in frustration.

“No, I started fucking around with Steve because I love shitting where I eat,” Richie says, “I thought we’d been over this.” Again, Richie could swear he can hear Stan roll his eyes over the phone.

“Look, I’m sorry you got blindsided by your middle school crush having got married during the decades you weren’t even talking to him, but can I please—“

“Listen,” Richie interrupts, now stage whispering into the phone, “I think we just had a moment. Like a _ moment. _ It was all tender and shit, like I practically told him I loved him back then and then he said something that is very up for interpretation, and _ fuck me, _I want to interpret it. It was like, full on romantically charged, man. There was tension, and not like, weird,” he grimaces at the word, but continues, “uncomfortable tension like we had earlier—well, up until he almost killed me in a car accident—but like good tension.”

“Car accident?”

“Huh? Oh, we almost bit it on some black ice. Anyway then his wife called because he missed checking in with her in time for _ curfew _ or whatever, and he left me with, like, emotional blue balls and the distinct reminder that _ he has a wife _. So, yeah.” Stan is silent on the other line again. Richie pulls the phone away from his ear to see if he hung up on him, but he didn’t. He continues:

“I think. It’s like. It’s like I saw him and everything came rushing back to me. Like it never left?”

“Alright?” Stan asks.

“I think I love him? Still love him? Like no matter what I do, or how long it’s been, or whatever, I’ve always been at least a little bit in love with him,” he says, getting quieter as he really lets himself think about it. “And I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it.” Ugh, that sounds so fucking gross, but here he is. There’s a pause and Stan sighs again, softer this time.

“Shit, Rich,” he takes a moment before continuing. “That’s all very beautiful and I’m going to go hug my wife over it. I’m sorry, I really don’t know what to tell you. Have you tried actually talking to him about it?”

There’s a knock at the door, and Richie almost jumps out of his skin.

“Yeah, thanks, uh. Speak of the devil, I gotta go.”

“Eddie?”

“Maybe? I’ll call you back, keep you posted.”

“Please don’t.”

“Alright, see ya Stanny, love you, byeeeeee.” 

There’s another sharp knock at the door, and Richie pulls himself up off the bed, tripping over where he had flung his shoes on the floor. He’s just about actually made it to the door when he hears Eddie whisper-shout from the other side.

“I know you’re still in there, asshole, I heard you eat shit.” He knocks again. “I’m not gonna wait out here like I’m delivering a fucking pizza.” Richie pulls the door open far enough to stick his face through. 

“What kind of pizza?” He waggles his eyebrows, and Eddie, glaring at him, wrenches the door open the rest of the way and pushes his way through. He glances around the room and turns back towards Richie.

“Dude, did you drink my drink?” 

“I didn’t know you were coming back?”

“I was taking a phone call?”

“Well, sorry, I thought maybe you got grounded for being up past your bedtime.” 

“It’s not— she just— she just fucking worries, okay? I don’t need your digs about it.” Eddie sits down on the bed, aggravated. Eddie looks considerably… damper than he had before he left Richie’s room.

“Why are you so sweaty?” Eddie throws his head in his hands.

“Just, on the phone—“

“Phone sex?” Richie doesn’t know why he’s like this. When Eddie lifts his head from his hands, exasperated, Richie’s pretty sure he’s thinking the same thing.

“No, dipshit, not phone sex. I forgot to call, and she thought I was fucking dead, so I had to talk her down and tell her I was late because of the snow, and so she started listing all these ways I could have died driving here and wouldn’t just let me explain, and I guess she reminded me— she sounded so much like, and you, _you put it in my head_ and— she— _fuck, _I called her _mommy, _and I panicked and I just threw my fucking phone across the room. And I kind of hoped I could come over here and not fucking talk about it, so thanks, Richie, for the hilarious phone sex joke, I’m sure it would have killed on stage, you're so fucking funny, you _asshole._” He’s patting around his body, checking his pockets for something that isn’t there “God _fucking_ damn it, why can’t I—“

Richie drops down next to him on the bed, and grabs his hand.

“Okay, so we’re gonna try not panicking.”

“Fuck you.” Eddie is still tiptoeing along the edge of hyperventilation. Richie holds his hand a bit tighter, rhythmically rubbing circles into his wrist with his thumb. 

“Just— here, look at me. Let’s just breathe for a little bit, and then you can bitch me out over my shitty jokes all you want.” Eddie glares at him, but, after a second, nods and grabs Richie’s hand back. They sit there, minutes passing, both men miraculously quiet as Eddie’s breathing evens out. Even after he’s calmed down, they stay sat together.

“You threw your phone, huh?” asks Richie. Eddie chuckles, dry.

“Just tossed it away like it tried to bite me. Fuckin’ _ exploded _ against the hardwood.” He makes a _ kaboom _ gesture with his free hand. 

“You really are a handful, Eds, you know that?” Richie chuckles back, but stops short when he realizes something. “You know, I haven’t seen you have an attack that bad since, like, the eighth grade. Since you made your mom tone it down with all the overprotective stuff,” Richie says. 

“They started getting bad again when she got sick,” he shrugs. “Just… I abandoned her, you know? Like, there she was, sick like she always told me that I was gonna get and I had to let my wife take care of everything because I just… ran away from it.” Richie squeezes his hand and thinks about what to say.

“Y’know, I talked to Bev earlier, about things. Some of her things.” He keeps it purposefully vague.

“Yeah?”

“About how it’s okay to run away when something’s bad for you. It’s okay to run towards something better. I hate to say it, what with our intense sexual chemistry, but you were always better off away from her. Your mom,” he clarifies, although at this point he’s not sure it matters. Eddie keeps looking at him, not reacting to Richie’s attempt to lighten this up a little bit.

“This weekend, I just— I lied to my boss and Myra and I—I said I had a funeral.” A funeral?

“Shit, that’s what you came up with? What, did you invent a dead cousin?”

“It was the first thing I thought of… I just dropped everything to get away. To get away to here_, _ which is bullshit because I fucking hate this town,” Eddie says, gesturing stiffly with his free arm. He sits silently a bit longer, staring down at their joined hands. He breaks the silence again, eventually.

“I missed you too,” Eddie says, quiet. “I don’t think I said that yet. All of you, but…” Richie isn’t sure where he’s going with this, but he’s careful to keep his mouth shut.

“I just wish I could have known you, all that time I didn’t get to,” Eddie finishes.

“Me too, Eds. Me too.” Richies watches a yawn start across Eddie’s face and gently pulls their hands apart. Eddie yawns fully at that point, and it’s not fair, Richie thinks, how a grown-ass man can be this fucking cute. 

“Can I stay here tonight?” Eddie asks. “I just want to lie down.” Richie throws a hand to his chest, clutching at invisible pearls.

“Why, Mr. Kaspbrak, so forward!” he says, going for a Southern Belle voice and landing closer to Reba, so, still good. Eddie shoves him and Richie has to brace himself to not tumble off the foot of the bed. He watches Eddie crawl up and settle himself on one side of the bed before taking his place on the other, maintaining a careful distance between them. They lay, quiet, for long enough that Richie starts to think that Eddie’s already asleep when he speaks again, drawing Richie out of the light doze he had fallen into.

“Do you ever,” Eddie starts, not looking over at Richie, “do you ever feel like you’re just doing something because it’s what you were, like, told to do?”

“I mean, yeah. My whole job is me doing what people tell me to do, man.” Eddie takes a few moments to respond.

“…Right. I didn’t think about it like that.” Eddie rolls his shoulders where he lays on the bed, like he can’t get comfortable. Richie isn't sure if he knows what Eddie's getting at, but...

“But,” Richie continues, “I think I get what you mean? If I’m getting this right? I mean, I told you, you guys are the only people I’ve actually, fully, like, purposefully told about the whole ‘gay thing’ outside of my management,” he thinks for a second, “Or guys I’m actively fucking, but that goes, uh, hand in hand.”

“Right,” Eddie says, absently. 

“It’s just like— I have a persona I gotta maintain, that’s the whole fuckin’ thing. It’s like— like old Hollywood studio image-managing except with like, dick jokes, right? It makes actually dating real hard, but I’ve just never really done much of that, so,” he mutters. Eddie rolls his shoulders again and turns onto his side away from Richie. 

“Seems lonely,” he says, quiet. Richie turns toward him, staring at his back as if he could will him to turn around again and look at him. 

“Kind of,” Richie responds. It’s incredibly lonely. It’s kind of ache that, if he doesn’t want to look right at it, slots right between the rungs of his ribs, like a playing card in bike spokes, thrumming constantly. It’s the unfading undercurrent of his day-to-day, but he’s not about to upheave his whole career for the vague concept of potential love. Not for just anyone, anyway. “We can’t all be husband material, Mr. Kaspbrak,” he says. Eddie scoffs and (_ finally!) _turns back around to face Richie.

“Yeah, okay, numbnuts, are you being sarcastic or did you forget that I lied to my wife about coming here?” Richies shrugs at him. Eddie feels incredibly close right now, _ is _ incredibly close right now, which is _ great _ , but talking about _ Myra _ isn’t doing much to alleviate the weird sense of guilt setting up camp in his stomach. 

“It’s just— I love my wife,” Eddie says, and Richie is proud of himself for not laughing at this sudden, defensive declaration. “I do.”

“I never said you didn’t?”

“I never said that you said I didn’t, let me fucking finish.” He glares at Richie who nods at him to continue. “I get— I get worried that I’m just treading water and there’s this current dragging me along, or trying to, and it’s so fast that I can barely stay put let alone change direction, or get out of the water, and if— If I try too hard and thrash around too much I’ll just… just fucking drown. And even if— even if I wanted to get out of the water, then I’m just, like, in the middle of the woods. Where would I even go from there?” Eddie is rambling now, subdued from his apparent exhaustion but still rattling off some complex metaphor that Richie, tired himself and jet-lagged to boot, is barely following. 

“Build a cabin, maybe? I bet we could get Ben to help,” Richie says, and Eddie gets a funny look on his face. “Are you trying to teach a course on creative writing here, or what?” he jokes, because that’s something he knows how to do. Eddie’s still looking at him sort of… weird. He seems to catch himself this and averts his eyes. Richie sighs.

“Listen. I can’t tell you what you should do. I can’t, plain and simple,” he says. “I can only tell you what I want you to do, and there’s no unselfish way to do that.”

“What do you want?” Eddie asks, glancing back at Richie. Richie holds his gaze, just looking at him. If Eddie knows, then he knows. If he doesn’t, then this isn’t the time nor the place, now is it.

“How about you go use my shower,” Richie says instead. “You’re all stress-sweaty and you’ll be pissed if you wake up like that.” Eddie holds eye contact with him for another beat, then nods and moves to get off of the bed and creep over to the ensuite. 

“Goodnight, Eds,” he says, but Eddie has already shut the door. Richie gets up and groggily changes into some more sleep-friendly clothes and lays back down, telling himself that _ tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll figure out what to say, _as he drifts off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: i've never seen blame it on rio and neither should you!


	6. Call Me Lactose Intolerant, because I Can't Fucking Stand Derry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: vague suicide ideation, implied alcoholism

The energy, just like, the general _ vibe _ of the next day is, dare Richie say it, weird. Not the same flavor of weird as yesterday, but a hot-off-the-presses, brand spankin’ new, limited edition variety of weird. The kind of weird that comes with people being somewhere they really weren’t supposed to be anymore. It’s weird that they’re in their hometown, it’s weird that they’re all staying in the only hotel there because none of them have any family still around, and it’s weird that they’re all still there when they were supposed to get the fuck outta dodge on their respective cancelled flights this morning. It’s like, Richie thinks, that one episode of _ Star Trek: The Next Generation _ (which, in high school, he would have taken to the fucking _grave_ that he ever watched) where there’s like, an alternate universe where they’re all, like, super At War and Tasha Yar is alive again somehow because the timeline got all fucked with, but she could still feel the whole time that she was supposed to be dead. Or something. Whoopi Goldberg was there, Richie remembers, but she was there a lot.

So _ basically _ , he’s still hanging around the Derry Townhouse and building up a lot of _ weird _ nervous energy because he was supposed to have got slime-monstered (been on a flight home) before the end of season one (before like, noon). 

He’s not sure how to proceed on the Eddie Situation, both in a general sense and in the sense that he can’t even find the man anywhere. Richie had awoken to an empty bed and several new notifications on his phone. One confirming what he already knew (his flight is cancelled, please try this one at ass o’clock tonight, hugs and kisses from United Airlines) and several missed calls from Steve that he supposes he’ll get to at some point. 

He would love to take Stan’s half-asleep advice and just, like, _ talk _ to Eddie about all of this straightforwardly, but he knows it’s just not feasible, or reasonable, or even really okay. He’s nauseous over all of it. Over seeing Eddie again. Over everything he does (almost nothing) and doesn’t (almost everything) know about Eddie’s marriage. Over how, even from beyond the grave, Sonia Kaspbrak is still sending her son into panic attacks. Over how he has no _ fucking clue _ what to do, or if there’s even anything he _ should _ do. Over how, again, he has _ no idea _ where he is. At this point he doesn’t even know what all it is he doesn’t know and he’s letting himself slip into a truly decadent level of distress. 

He’s pacing his room, running the pros and cons of calling Stan again (and further disrupting the vacation that Stan probably deserves and should be able to enjoy) when his phone buzzes for the fiftieth time in the last twelve hours. The caller ID reads: _ Stephen Faulkner (Pick Up the Fucking Phone). _Richie groans and accepts the call, leaning his back against the wall and sliding down to the floor.

“Good morning, Stephen, to what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“I’m assuming you answering my call means that you’re not on a plane right now.” Steve’s voice is calm, but in a “I’m a professional, so I keep my cool even if I’m fucking pissed” kind of way, which is something new he must be trying. Richie decides that if he’s gonna be all “mature” about it then two can play at that game.

“Nothing’s flying out of Bangor until at least tonight and I’m holed up in Bumfuck, Maine until then. I will be back as soon as I can make it. I do mean that,” Richie explains, curtly. Steve sighs.

“You’re cutting it real fucking close, you know that? Believe it or not, Tozier, but you can’t just do what you want, you have obligations. You’re not the second coming of George Carlin, people aren’t just going to let shit slide for you. Do you even want to be doing this tour?” 

What’s he supposed to say to that? _ Does _ he even want to be doing this tour? Why the _ fuck _ should _ he _ know? Steve won’t say it, out of some sort of misplaced sense of professionalism, but Richie is more than aware that this whole tour is a last ditch effort to revitalize his ever-weakening career. The last tour was an absolute shitshow and Richie, who never loved his ghostwriter’s material, fucking _ hated _ that script in particular. He doesn’t know if the guy was, like, going through something or what, but it was bad and Richie’s contempt for the material was _ noticeable._ At points, near the end of the tour, he skipped over significant sections of the show, cutting the time down by almost twenty minutes, just_ because._

One particular reviewer said, of his (universally panned) Netflix special: “Throughout the performance, Tozier comes across as being in combat against his own material. Many of his jokes are spat out, like he’s trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth, forcing that taste onto his waiting audience. There’s nobody having fun at this performance, least of all the supposed comedian himself.” (This one is Richie’s personal favorite, he has it bookmarked for easy access whenever he starts to feel too good about himself.) 

This new tour is a miracle that Richie doesn’t think he even asked for, a direct result of Steve and his publicist pulling strings that, again, Richie didn’t even ask them to pull. An "apology tour,” as Steve won’t stop calling it, to make up for the apparent Burning Bridges tour that he had on fucking accident. The material isn’t much better, but it isn’t any worse, so maybe this time Richie can try a little bit harder to sell it, or so they keep telling him. 

This circuit is much smaller than any of his previous ones, what with all the lit matches and all the bridges, so he can look forward to only having ten cities instead of twenty in which he can weigh the pros and cons of Virginia Woolf-ing himself in the waterpark wave pool of a Holiday Inn. So, _ no, _ Steve, he doesn’t want to do this tour. But it’s his _ fucking job _, and so he guesses he will. He’s sure his dad, before his wanderlust-lifestyle retirement, had some days where he just wasn’t up to drilling teeth or gluing molars or whatever the fuck dentists do when their patients are under the gas. And what did he do? He made like an adult and did his job, even if he had to pop open a flask once or twice or twelve times throughout the workday. And Richie’s even allowed to drink on stage while he’s working, so he really doesn’t have any excuse, now does he?

Does he? _ Does he? Does he, does he, does he? _

“I don’t think so,” he murmurs and hangs up on him. He turns off his phone and shoves it in his duffle bag, burying it under his dirty clothes.

He sneaks downstairs to the townhouse foyer, planning to grab a quick screwdriver-hold-the-OJ and ignore what he just did, when he stumbles across everyone else (save for the mysterious, vanishing Eddie Kaspbrak) already there, already with glasses in hand.

“Wow,” he says, “I’m not gonna say anything about the day drinking because, if you can believe it, that was already my sexy brunch plan.” He looks at the tired faces of his friends, seeing them in the early morning daylight for the first time in years. They’re all still outrageously beautiful, but, at the same time? They look like shit. It only just occurs to him that last night might have been just as revelatory for the rest of his friends as it had been for him. What is _up_ with that?

He’s always been a loudmouth, so he puts that to work:

“Are we all here because we hit rock fucking bottom, or is it just me? Like are we having tandem midlife crises, because honestly I’d love the buddy system on this one.” No one answers him, so he pushes on, “We all dropped fucking everything to come back to _ Derry _? That’s not the behavior of someone with their shit together. No offense, Mike.” Nobody says anything, they just look at him. He goes over to the bar and pours himself a drink. “Well?” he tries again. 

Bill, ever the leader, speaks up.

“I got fired. F-from my own movie,” he says. “They hated my script, every ending I wr-wrote, so they hired a team.” He looks at Ben, who sighs.

“I barely do any of my own design anymore, I’m too busy managing the company to do any of what I really wanted to. I’ve… spent a long time missing out.” He shrugs. 

“I’m doing alright, but,” Mike says, “there’s a lot of things I want to do. Places. I want to travel and learn and I just can’t seem to get out of this town.” Richie nods at him, and glances over at Beverly. She smiles at him, apologetically, but he doesn’t want to make her talk about it. 

“I’ve got some stuff of my own,” she says, making eye contact with Ben across the way, who nods at her in support.

“And me,” Richie says, drawing the attention back to himself with a flourish of his hands, “I’m a hack comedian so deep in the closet I’m coughing up mothballs and I essentially just told my manager to eat shit, so the chances of me working again anytime soon are slim-to-fucked, baby! God, I love group therapy! Does _anybody_ know where the _fuck_ Eddie went?” He surveys the room, waiting for someone to answer him. Everyone looks uncomfortable, but they’re also all drinking hard liquor at ten-thirty in the AM, so discomfort just comes with the territory, now don’t it?

“Richie, honey,” Beverly starts, gently, “he left this morning. He said he broke his phone last night and decided it would be best that he drive home early. He’s sorry he couldn’t say goodbye to everyone.” 

Richie _ had _ told Eddie that it was okay to run away, and while this wasn’t exactly what he was talking about he had to admire the man’s efficiency.

“Cool,” Richie says, and, against his own fucking wishes, starts to tear up. “Does— does anyone want to take me to get my rental car?”

Ben ends up taking him, and, for the first couple of minutes of the drive, he’s kind enough to let Richie keep crying in the passenger seat without asking any questions. For the first couple of minutes. After that, however, Ben’s innate sense of well-meaning-but-fucking-nosy kindness drives him to try and find a way to help.

“Is this about—“ Ben starts, but Richie cuts him off.

“I’m gonna be real with you,” he interrupts, “I have no fucking clue why I’m crying right now, I think I might just be having a breakdown. God, I can’t wait to go full 2007 Britney. If you see an open barbershop pull over for me, will you?”

“I’m not going to let you do that, Rich.”

“So much for my support system.” 

“I mean,” Ben says after a few moments of contemplation, “are you sure you want to risk shaving off what’s left of your hairline?” 

“Ohhh! You been hiding zingers from me, Benjamin?” Richie laughs, sniffling a bit. 

He busies himself with watching the dingy scenery of Derry as they drive through, following the passing buildings with his finger on the window until they reach the uncomfortably long red light in the center of town.

“You know, it was kind of weird to see you all again,” Ben says, after pulling to a stop exactly at the line with respect to the crosswalk.

“_Weird?_ Really, I hadn’t noticed.”

“God, you’re bitchy,” Ben laughs. “Anyway, it was especially weird for me, in particular, to see Beverly. In particular.”

“Mhm,” Richie says. He has a pretty good idea where this is going, so he focuses most of his attention to tapping his fingers on the passenger side window. If Ben wants to have a heart-to-heart then he’s going to pay the toll of smudgy glass and endless, unrhythmic drumming.

“I know everyone knew I had the biggest crush on her, I mean, it was hard to miss. And I knew that nothing would probably ever come of it, but I liked her so much that I thought it was amazing to even be her friend. I don’t think that crush ever really went away, but it kind of fell back as I grew to love her as a person through knowing and loving her as a friend.”

“Right,” Richie says, still looking out the window.

“It really broke my heart when we all lost contact with each other, y’know? I know that’s a part of growing up, but I think I really hoped we’d manage to hold on to each other.” Richie feels him glance over at him, and turns to meet his eyes.

“The unbreakable bonds of shared trauma?” he asks, and Ben chuckles at that.

“Sure, I guess, but also it just felt like those were the kind of people we were. Like we’d find a way to stick together. But it happened, and I did alright for myself, and I think I didn’t even realize how much I missed you guys until I was given a chance to see you all again,” he says. “I don’t think I told you this, but I was in the middle of a conference call when Mike called me. I was Skyping with investors and I just set my assistant on them, and hung up to go pack.” Richie does smile at this.

“I skipped out on a talk show appearance,” he admits.

“See?” Ben asks, “You get it. So I drop this meeting and the next thing I know I’m in Derry and I’m walking into the high school and I see you guys and it’s like,” he thinks for a moment, “it’s not like I never left, it’s not like I was pining over my high school days, I mean, yeesh. But with you guys, all the love was still there. For all of you. And for Beverly.” Ah, there it is. Ben continues:

“And, like all of us, she’s both exactly the same and totally different. She’s old and new and all just herself. And I still love that,” he says. “She’s in a real rough patch right now. She mentioned she told you?” Richie nods, and Ben takes this as a cue to continue. “She’s staying with me for a while. Just until she gets back on her feet, and I’m helping her find an apartment and helping support her while she gets all her stuff in order. And I’m happy. I don’t know what’s going to happen with us, or if anything ever will, but she’s my friend, and I love her, and I’m so happy I get to help her get to be her best self. I still love her, even if it’s not in the way I thought I wanted.” Ben’s tearing up a little bit, and while Richie thought he’d been all cried out, he finds himself getting a little watery too. He pushes his glasses up off his face to rub at his eyes. He looks up at the somehow still red light. He wants to rag on Ben for somehow being a sappier adult that he had been a teenager, but he can’t pull the words together. None of them feel right. 

There’s a question Ben’s posing, without actually asking it, but the answer is yes.

He’d love Eddie in any way he’d let him.

“I really do love him, huh,” he says, soft. It’s not a question.

“I know, buddy,” Ben murmurs back. “This is a really long light, isn’t it?”

Ben drives him the rest of the way to where his obnoxious rental car still sits in the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant, and sticks around to help Richie unbury it from the six inches of snow piled up on top. Even though he’s going to see Ben back at the townhouse when he goes to collect his luggage, Richie still hugs him before he gets in his car. 

He gets back to the hotel and gathers up all his shit and throws it in the rental car. He has time to spare, so he sits in the foyer with the remainder of the Losers as they all slowly trickle out to either catch flights or drive home. 

That night he boards a redeye towards Los Angeles. Some time later, as he sits miles above some flyover state, half asleep, he realizes that he has no idea what he’s doing next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also, as a heads up, this is a sympathetic towards myra type of story
> 
> xoxo gossip girl


	7. Lifetime Movies: A Metaphor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: emetophobia
> 
> i had roughly four hundred issues uploading this chapter

One week later finds Richie huddling over a garbage can in the musty backstage “greenroom” of a comedy club in Laughlin, Nevada, mentally tracing backwards the series of dumbass decisions that were made to get him to exactly this point. 

Not _ all _ of it is his fault, if you go back far enough. If you go way back, like “origin story” way, way back, Richie wouldn’t be here at all if his parents (who, at the time, were perfectly happy with their beautiful daughter) weren’t lazy one date night and just decided to roll with the _ whoopsie! _ that is now their son. Or, had his high school theatre director not encouraged him to audition for DTHS’s killer (very bad) production of _ Grease, _ he never would have developed his indefatigable need to have people look at him on a stage (he’d landed the role of Kenickie, and appalled the grandparent-heavy crowd by singing the uncensored version of “Greased Lightnin’”, because that car _ was _a pussy wagon and it was vital that the people of Derry knew). 

If you go less far back (and here’s where it starts to be Richie’s fault), he chose this career path. While his father had never pushed him to follow in his footsteps towards dental school (likely realizing early on that his son had too much personality and not enough respect for delicate instruments to excel in dentistry) he definitely had higher hopes than _ comedian _. That one was all Richie. The stand-up comedy boom of the eighties was long dead, cold, and buried by the time Richie bombed his first open mic, and still he reached out with both hands, all in, towards the concept of “making it.” 

It very explicitly becomes Richie’s fault the closer the timeline draws to the present:

It’s his fault he chose to sell out, it’s his fault he agreed with the persona, it’s his fault his career’s in the toilet, it’s his fault he let Steve talk him _ back into this tour _, and it’s his fault he’s puking into this trashcan, because it’s his fault he got the spins, because it’s his fault he decided to drink on the anti-depressants that he just decided to start taking again. 

After the emotional upheaval that was the reunion weekend, Richie had left Derry with a sort of intense determination that he hadn’t known what to do with, which puttered out into a sort of quiet despair by the time he’d weathered through his flight home and its series of timezone hops. He’d made it back to his condo and had just enough time to drop all his shit by the doorway and shuffle to his fridge to eat dubiously aged chicken salad out of the deli container with a soup spoon, when he was brought out of his stupor by a series of buzzes from his phone, which he’d only just turned back on. He had spent half of the flight worried about what messages he may or may not have and half of it fading in and out of consciousness from pure mental/emotional exhaustion (he spent a further third half watching the person catty-corner to him watch a big-box comedy he had auditioned for and lost out to Dane _ fucking _ Cook). 

He had a single message from Steve: a very ominous “Call me.” He pushed that to the side, though, when he saw a number of notifications were from a group chat he’d been added to that Mike set up, charmingly titled The Losers Club Redux. He couldn’t help but smile as he scrolled up through the messages he missed while traveling, and shot off a quick greeting to let everyone know he’d arrived in LA safe and (physically) sound. 

He’d planned on giving Steve that promised phone call after he had a chance to demolish his chicken salad (the last time he ate was him unhinging his jaw to inhale a soft pretzel during his fifty-five minute layover at O’Hare, so he was _really_ _into _this chicken salad), but his manager ignored that _he _asked Richie to contact _him_ and called to tell Richie that he was downstairs and that’d Richie would be letting him in.

One stern conversation full of phrases like “cancellation fees” and “ticket refunds” and “owing a lot of money” later, and Richie Tozier’s Please Like Me Again Tour was back on.

This is not what he wanted. It is, in fact, pretty much the exact fucking opposite. But, like his uncle always told him every time he tried to teach him football, Richie’s got no follow through. 

And so, little bitch that he is, he’s three days and one city into his tour and clinging to a (thankfully bagged) wicker trash can for dear life. The stage manager strides over to him to let him know he’s on in ten and, like the hardened professional she is, completely overlooks his whole state of being. The world around him is starting to stay put and he’s pretty sure he’s empty now, so it seems like the show will, indeed, go on. 

He’s about to pull himself up off the sticky floor when he notices his phone light up from where he’d let it drop while he got better acquainted with the garbage. He’s planning on just letting it ring out, but, after noticing the name on the caller ID, he slides (to the best of his ability, it is a very sticky floor) on his knees to the phone, picking it up.

“Spagheds?” he answers, just quick enough to sound desperate.

“Is that— is that really how you’re greeting me?” Eddie asks.

“Eddie Spaghetti? Spaghetti Man? Eddie, baby?” He trips a bit over that last one, but sticks the landing. He hears Eddie laugh dryly on the other end of the line and grins, achingly wide, feeling sick at himself over how relieved he is to hear Eddie’s voice. He hasn’t heard from him since Derry and, while it’s only been a week, it had felt… significant.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Eddie says, “Knock it off, I wanted to, well, I— is— is this a bad time?” The stage manager pops her head back in the door to tell him it’s five ‘til go. He puts his phone to his chest and waves her off with a whispered, “yeah, yeah, thank you, five” before bringing it back up to his ear.

“No, not at all. What’s up?”

“I wanted to say sorry.” Sorry? For what?

“For what?”

“For disappearing like that. In Derry. I should have said goodbye, but you were sleeping and I— fucking nerves, y’know, and just took off—“ Richie doesn’t let Eddie finish his thought before interrupting in defense of him.

“No, no, it’s fine. Calm down, Kaspbrak, it’s not like you loved-me-leaved-me, you just crashed in my room and had some shit to take care of. Bev told me you wanted to say goodbye and couldn’t, it was fine.” It hadn’t really been _ fine _ , exactly, but it had been _ okay. _And all of the reasons it wasn’t fine, as far as Richie is concerned, were Richie’s own fault. 

“Shut up and let me fucking apologize,” Eddie says. “_ Christ _ , just let me have this.” A smirk crawls across Richie’s face and he can imagine Eddie growing visibly annoyed. _ Cute. _

“Did Eddie Spaghetti really call me up to apologize for running out on me like a one night stand?”

“Okay, don’t— don’t put it like that, dickhead. I was going to say that it was nice to see you, but never mind actually,” Eddie huffs.

“Aww, it was nice to see you too.” Before he can think too hard or better of it, he asks, “How’s the wife?” Morbid curiosity is fucking _ powerful _, and if it keeps Eddie on the phone with him for a little bit longer, maybe it won’t be that bad.

“She’s got a name,” Eddie sighs but continues. “She’s fine. I feel kind of shitty. I think she thought I wasn’t coming back, which, you know, tracks. I mean, I took off with zero warning and obviously lied about what I was doing, so. We, uh, both went fuckin’ overboard there, kind of.” Richie nods, knowing Eddie can’t see him over the phone, but doing it anyway. 

“Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“I really am glad I got to talk to you. That night,” he admits, and it sets Richie grinning again. “Now, don’t be an asshole about this, but it meant a lot to me. Helped me think through some shit.”

“Yeah?” The stage manager comes back for two ‘til, but he sends her away with a wave of his hand. He might just be lightheaded from the vomiting, but he’s feeling kind of soppy. If his cellphone had a curly cord, he’d be twisting it around his fingers like his sister always used to on calls with her high school boyfriend. He hears Eddie take a breath.

“Yeah, and,” he starts, “you really opened my eyes to some stuff, so I wanted to tell you. Myra and me, we’re,” Richie involuntarily holds his breath, “we’re gonna try some counseling. Things aren’t right with us, and I think I’ve known for a while, but you really made me realize. There’s some real shit to work through there. So, thanks, Richie. Legitimately.” 

Richie wants to check behind himself to see if his heart really did fall out his asshole, because if it didn’t, it’s just done one hell of an impression. 

“And, uh, I wanted to say good luck on your tour. Maybe let me know when you’re in New York.” Oh, right, that. Richie barks out a laugh.

“Right, man, I, uh, gotta go actually?”

“Oh, okay?”

“Yeah, I gotta be on stage in like,” he thinks, “four minutes ago, so I’m gonna— I’m gonna go do that?” Eddie tries to say something else, but Richie misses it as he hangs up his phone and lumbers out of the greenroom and into the bright lights of the stage. He grabs the microphone, if only to steady his hands.

“What’s up, Laughlin! What the fuck are any of us doing here?” There’s a smattering of shouts, but he pays them no mind. “Alright, let’s just— let’s just get this fuckin’ over with.” He clears his throat. “So, my, uh, girlfriend’s been saying to me…” he starts to trail off, “she, uh, she said." He stops. "Yeah, no, fuck this.” He looks out into the crowd, gives a polite little smile, bows, and sprints off stage.

* * *

“He said _ what _?” Richie tries to enjoy the vague vindication he gets from Beverly’s reaction to tonight’s events, but it’s easier said than done. He’s had precious few positive moments when sprawled out on a motel bed and this isn’t one of them.

“That he did, Ms. Marsh,” Richie says. He’s doing a voice, but he doesn’t know which one it is. “And I gotta say, you focusing on the ‘boy problems’ thing instead of my onstage meltdown tonight is the truest show of friendship.” He’d never really told Bev about the whole “Eddie Thing” but, like Ben, and probably the rest of their friends, she already kind of knew.

“No, we will also be talking about that,” Bev says and Richie actually glances towards where she is on his phone screen, curled up on a couch in what must be Ben’s sprawling abode, the man himself at a table behind her, clickety-clacking on a laptop and trying to look inconspicuous. “But this is a good jumping off point. Stan told me you guys had a ‘moment’ last weekend?”

“That gossipy bitch. He’s lucky I love him.” Richie groans and rolls over on the bed to better face where he’s propped up his phone. “But, yeah, we had at least one moment. If not more. There were several maybe moments, or that’s what I fucking thought.” Bev clicks her tongue, shaking her head.

“Honestly, Richie, if I didn’t know Eddie better I’d swear he’s doing this on purpose, but…”

“He would never do that, right, right. Yeah, I know.” Yeah, Eddie’s an asshole, they both are, but Eddie’s assholery is in a fast-talking, angry shouting kind of way. He’s always been kind of mean, but never purposefully cruel. Eddie is, under his spiky exterior, a good person, and he’s never had the kind of patience required to be calculating. Richie rests his head in his hands. He’s up late gabbing with his best gal pal over something his “crush” said to him and he feels like he might be regressing. He tells Beverly as much. 

“Well, you didn’t get to do any of this as a teenager, so we can do it now,” she justifies and Richie smiles, soft. It’s strange how, only a week after reconnecting, they’ve fallen right back into their old rhythm like their twenty-five year absence from each other’s lives had never happened. Which is beautiful, and great, and everything, but he just wishes it didn’t make it so much more obvious just how much he’d been missing out on. It’s a real drag to realize that you aren’t just the regular-degular, adulthood kind of miserable. It sucks serious ass to learn that you are, genuinely, _ really fucking unhappy. _

“I don’t know what I thought was gonna happen, like what, he’s just gonna up and realize that he loves me, and he’ll leave her, and then he’ll come out to LA and, oh my fucking _ god _ . I’d be the Other Woman in a _ Lifetime _movie, I’ve never been an Other Woman before.”

“You’re not the Other Woman.” 

“You’re right, there’s at least some fucking _ dignity _ in being the Other Woman. I’d be the, the sad best friend who, out of all the goodness of his little gay heart, puts his wants, and hopes, and jerk-off fantasies to the side to help the love of his stupid life stay straight married. And then absolutely dies at the end.” He’s happy for Eddie, if this is what he wants, he _ is. _But he’s had a long fucking night, and he’d like to indulge in some pity. Roll around in it a little, like a dog on a dead bird. 

“Out of the goodness of your little gay heart?” Beverly snorts.

“It’s a metaphor, Bev, you know my little gay heart is neutral at best.” There’s a quiet commotion as Ben shuts his laptop and slides his chair away from the table.

“Love of your life?” he asks, settling down next to Beverly on the couch.

“Let the record show that this was a Tozier-Marsh summit, Hanscom.”

“Let the record show that I am also your friend, and I care about you.” Richie’s touched, really, as much as he’d never say it. The last week has been an emotional rollercoaster and it feels like the ride attendant forgot to secure the safety bar on his seat. With all this new-old support, it’s like his friends are what’s holding him in place, keeping him from flying headfirst out of the Batman ride and ruining everyone’s trip to Great Adventure. 

Their support is more wholesome than what he gets from his actual family. His sister actually calls him, not too long after he wraps up his transcontinental conference with the Ben-and-Bev conglomerate, interrupting him in the middle of his double-fisting a cheeseburger and chocolate malt (shoveling future pain into his shitty, shitty lactose-intolerant body). Apparently videos of him choking on stage are already popping up on Twitter and Carly Martindale (née Tozier), exemplary big sister material as she is, takes the time to ensure that he’s okay before laughing her ass off at him. 

“Did you throw up?” she asks, as soon as she’s gained control of herself, barely adding a thin coat of real concern to her question.

“You’re loving this aren’t you? Not a trace of sympathy. And you call yourself a mother,” he says, talking with his mouth full as he keeps chomping on his burger.

“My kids are doing just fine. You’re not. Obviously. And I’ve even got video evidence.”

“Yeah, you and half the fucking world, Carl, what do you want?” He slurps at his malt, but it’s at that point where it just won’t go up the damn straw anymore, so it just makes a lot of noise.

“I really am worried about you, you know? Mom told me you were in Derry last week? You never tell me anything, anymore. I didn’t even know you were touring again until I saw you fucking trending tonight.” Richie wracks his brain to try to remember if he told his mother about the reunion, but there’s no way the last time he talked to her was that recent. He doesn’t question it, though. Maggie Tozier has always had connections. 

“I was gracing a reunion with my presence, just met up with some old friends. It wasn’t a big deal.” It was, turns out, a big deal. “And don’t worry about the tour, because I’m pretty sure I just took that dog behind the shed.” He’s gone ahead and blocked Steve’s number, and, while nothing’s _ official _ official, he considers both his tour and career to be _ officially _ Old Yeller’d and he _ officially _ owes a lot of venues a lot of money. 

“Jesus,” Carly says, finally sounding legitimately worried, _ thanks sis _, “what do you think you’re gonna do?” There’s an implied “if you need anything” there, and he considers just disappearing into his sister’s spare bedroom for a while. Which.

As a kid, Richie had always found himself fascinated by the idea of running away, of disappearing. When he was very young, he’d toy around with the idea of it, of throwing some clothes and snacks into a bindle, like the ones in the cartoons, and just up and running. His plans never really got past just that, the planning stage, because they were usually out of boredom or that feeling of outrage that comes with getting in trouble as a kid. But still, he loved the mystery of it. 

But, by the time he was a teenager, and Bill’s little brother disappeared and subsequently, months later, un-disappeared un-alive, the idea had soured. There wasn’t anything fun about being missing; it was terrifying. There’s a horror in nobody knowing where you are, knowing that if something is, or were to happen to you then you’re fucked and it’s a sure lucky thing if you’re ever even found. 

As a celebrity, in _ becoming _ a celebrity, Richie’s made it more-or-less impossible for himself to go missing. C-list and sinking or not, he’s of (some) public interest. He’s hard pressed to think of a recent time where he could be at the grocery store, or the gas station, or the tiny storefront of his favorite taqueria without feeling at least recognized, if not actually seeing cameras. And there’s comfort in that, outside of quenching the need for attention he’s had his whole life, since he holed up in his room as a kid practicing voices into his ugly, beige Fisher-Price cassette recorder. There’s comfort in knowing that, if he bites the big one someday in the middle of his condo (likely from something stupid, like choking on a too-big mouthful of M&Ms, or tripping and crashing headfirst into his glasstop coffee table, or maybe even one of those sudden aneurysms he spent his childhood teasing Eddie about) he at least knows that it won’t be too long before he’s checked in on and he’s found. He won’t just lay there for days or weeks or months on end until his downstairs neighbor calls building management over him leaking through her ceiling.

But now, standing in the ruins of a career he tried to put down humanely a week previous, fucking off from the cultural zeitgeist sounds pretty tasty. And he wouldn’t be _ missing _, he’d just only let some people know where he was.

“Hey,” he says, “how much would you say the kids miss Uncle Rich?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ myself: please write a chapter without a phone call  
myself @ me: eat shit
> 
> chapter eight is in pieces but well on its way


	8. Seize the Day, Dave Coulier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, um, chapter eight ended up being three chapters long  
whoops  
they'll all be uploaded tonight as i edit them
> 
> right, also, the rating is going up

The plan isn’t to stay with his sister for very long. “For the holidays,” he’d said and he’s dead set on sticking to that. He would pop by for a few days, get his mind cleared and shit settled, eat dinner with his parents a couple of times, and then arise anew and refreshed within a week. Bam, homemade mental health retreat, and it’s even in-network. 

There’s a peace of mind that comes with escaping California for his sister’s sleepy, suburban two-story outside Milwaukee. Richie knows he can’t stomach LA anymore. It’s too much, with its spackling of glitz over grime and its samey-samey sense of style. It’s never meshed well enough with his unconcealed dinginess and being there is too distinct a reminder of his recent high-intensity career decisions (fuck ups). Plus, no one can show up at his door to yell at him if he isn’t there. It’s very much not his problem anymore. Any and all conversations are forced into emails and those are deliciously easy to ignore. 

But, still, in any case, it’s been a long-ass time since Richie’s ever bothered to come home for the holidays. At first it was because he had zero interest in returning to Derry, but later, after Carly’s place became Tozier Family Headquarters when his parents sold the family home to buy their RV (which is big, and ugly, and blocking the fucking driveway so Richie has to park on the street), he still just didn’t bother to show up. If anyone wanted to see him that badly, they could fly out to him. Once he “made it,” he even started paying for their tickets. It was a pretty good system, if he can say so himself. He never had to pack and his family got to see him, bing bang boom, everybody wins.

It hadn’t been, like, a big deal for most of his twenties, when his family didn’t care that much whether or not they all got together to see each other. That’s just how they’d always been as a family. Like, sure, yeah, they loved each other, but that didn’t mean they had to hang out. 

Growing up, his family had been _ fine _ , especially when he took time to compare them to what some of his friends were dealing with. Between Mrs. K and Bev’s dad, his folks were _ choice _ in comparison. Sure, he can’t remember a time where his father distinctly told him, word for word, that he “loved him,” but he had also never kicked the shit out of him _ and _ he helped pay for college. And sure, his mother worked long hours and, after his sister left for college, seemed to make a game out of how long she could stay out of the house, but she always made pancakes on his birthday and never made him think he had asthma (or anemia/a walnut allergy/fucking _ rickets _), so. 

It was in his mid-twenties that Richie realized that while his mother and father were good people, they really weren’t great parents, and that probably didn’t do wonders for his emotional development (twenty-five had been a real banner year for Richie in regards to coming to terms with things). He’d filed that little epiphany under “When/If We Come to It” and carried on his merry way.

But then his sister went and did the whole “get married and have kids” thing (which was massively unfair, because she'd already done the “be a tooth doctor” thing; although, like a fucking sadist, she chose _ orthodontics _ as her life’s work), and all of a sudden Went and Maggie decided to go whole-fucking-hog into grandparenthood. All of a sudden, family gatherings became a _ thing _ that he was now expected to attend. As much as Richie loves his nephews, he’s just never been up to flying out to a snowy hellscape to eat dry turkey and field questions from his parents regarding when he was going to settle down (questions that, try as he might, no amount of heavy-handed hinting ever quite killed).

The answer to the question of whether or not his sister’s kids missed him is a resounding “not really.” They’re teenagers now (thirteen and fifteen, arguably the worst ages), which is super fucking weird. Okay, so he’s not been around for holidays, but he’s ninety percent sure he’d been remembering birthdays, so he has no clue what’s happened. There’re just these little dudes in his sister’s house that he remembers being cute and sweet and now smell like sweat and keep frowning at him. The overwhelming energy of the house is a chorus of “why is Uncle Rich here?” It’s all getting very _ Full House _ very quickly and Richie really doesn’t want to be Dave Coulier (he knows he’s not hot enough to be John Stamos, he’s made peace with it). Add in the nine uncomfortable conversations he has with his brother-in-law in as many days, and he’s pretty sure he’s had enough. 

Scott Martindale (or, as Richie likes to think of him, Mr. Carly Tozier) calls Richie either “Richard” or “bud” and nothing else. They don’t really know how to act around each other. At this point, Richie’s already declared it a lost cause but Scott just keeps trying anytime they get left in a room together. It’s not that they don’t “get along” there’s just an inherent lack of any sort of chemistry, if only because they have incompatible senses of humor (which is to say that Richie has a sense of humor and Scott has never “got” comedy). He doesn’t even react badly when Richie makes a joke (in poor taste or otherwise), he just nods at him and smiles or sometimes says “That’s nice.” It’s excruciating.

“So, Richard,” Scott had said to him one night after dinner, Scott cleaning up dishes and Richie mostly just being in the way, “what’s up next on the docket for you, bud?”

Were Richie to make a list of his “buds,” Scott would not be on it. There’s nothing wrong with the guy, not really, and, as far as Richie’s ever been able to tell, the man really does love his sister. But their relationship is exactly as you’d expect between an oatmeal-flavored, “bud” saying, straight, human pair of khakis and a pseudo-famous, loudmouthed, gay comedian that he doesn’t think is funny: 

It fucking sucks.

Scott is a miracle worker in that he’s very good at making Richie not feel like talking. It’s something he and Richie’s father have in common and _ that _ might just be a glowing insight into why they get along so goddamn well. 

“Like for tonight, or in general?” Richie had asked back, “Because the answer to both is,” he tried to think of something funny to say, couldn’t, then remembered who he was talking to and gave up. “I don’t know,” he’d said, because he didn’t. Which was true enough.

After his aborted show in Laughlin (TMZ reported it as a “meltdown” but it hadn’t been that theatrical and he’s got film on that. They’d also reported that he was in rehab, shacking up with Katie Holmes, and being inducted into a NXIVM-style sex cult, so, grain of salt) Steve had, understandably, cut ties with Richie. Richie would like to say that, technically, he cut ties first, but he also isn’t very worried over any of that right now. Richie’s brand new point of focus is killing “Richie Tozier, Comedian” so he can give some much-needed attention to “Richie Tozier, Person.” It’s going okay.

“Ah,” Scott said, as if he was actually contemplating the nothing that Richie had just said. The conversation died there. Wash, rinse, and repeat several times over the last week and a half and Richie’s got his bags packed by the twenty-sixth.

He’s forty-three goddamn years old and, while out of a job, still doing pretty well in the way of savings. Unfortunately for the world, it is his oyster. Hiding out in his sister’s spare bedroom, curled into himself under the covers like a lanky, hairy turtle had been nice while it lasted, but if Richie wants a new start, he’s realizing that he’s gonna have to do it on his own terms. It’s time, he thinks, to grow the fuck up.

_ Are you there, Judy Blume? It’s me, Richie. I know I’m not a big pray-er, but I need some advice and _ ¡Hola Papi! _ won’t get back to me fast enough. You ever spend an evening with your childhood best-friend-slash-first-love and lose your whole fucking mind? I’ll take my answer off the air. _

**JUNE 2020**

By the first of the year, he’d elected to move to Chicago, because it feels correct, and different (and, above all, cheaper than LA and less morally iffy than needlessly mooching off his sister). His father had shown off a rare bout of parental zeal and helped him with hauling his old shit to his new place, even if he did grumble about a lot of it. Richie had sprung for a modest, but comfy two bedroom in Andersonville, because he just doesn’t have the energy for more active parts of the city and he’s always liked lesbians. 

The group chat Mike set up has remained pretty active, with everyone giving life updates pretty regularly. Through the chat he’s watched Bev move into and then out of Ben’s house. She elected to stay in the same city, though, and as far as he can tell (from their regular texts and facetime appointments, key ingredients in the rekindling of a friendship he can’t believe he let himself forget), they spend a lot of time with each other. Things are kind of messy with her label through the divorce, but she’s reorganizing and reinventing some stuff and it’s going well, she says. Mike’s found a type of research job that allows him to travel all sorts of places. He’s visiting Bill and his wife in LA at the moment; they’ve both been sending albums’ worths of photos to the chat on a near-daily basis for the last week. Even Stan gives updates from time to time, although he’s more likely to just react to other peoples’ posts than make any of his own, but now Richie calls him more than twice a year to catch up and sometimes Stan even calls him.

Richie is surprised over how much he hears out of Eddie. Not really any specific personal updates, which Richie can’t judge because he’s given very little in the way of that either outside of sending a “Chi-town, baby!” to let them know where exactly he’d moved. But they talk often enough, him and Eddie. Sometimes in the group chat, sometimes in a chat between just the two of them, and sometimes they call. A number of evenings pass with Richie pacing his apartment, vaguely cleaning and listening to Eddie launch into a diatribe about his boss, or the guy who cut him off in traffic, or the kid at the deli counter who never slices his cheese evenly or they pass with Richie stream-of-conscious spelling out his day while Eddie commutes home from work. Eddie doesn’t tell him anything about his marriage and Richie doesn’t ask. Richie doesn’t say much about his career, and Eddie doesn’t push. But still, they joke, and they argue, and, if Richie weren’t so sure he knows better, he’d say they flirt, too. It feels like they’re friends again, and while he’s not sure how substantial it actually is, he cherishes it. 

Up until recently, however. The last couple of months have been suspiciously Eddie-lite, and while he can pretend he’s not worried to his other friends, he can’t lie to himself (he was far too good at that for far too long, he’s cold-turkey’d trying to bullshit himself). He sends out some feelers from time to time, just to check in, and Eddie responds often enough, it just remains very vague. Richie has told him, in an honest shot at taking Ben’s advice, that if Eddie ever needs anything (_ anything) _ Richie will be there, and he means it. 

It’s like seven p.m. on a Thursday and Richie has slung himself half across the loveseat in the greenroom of newer improv theater in Lincoln Park. After a few months of the blissful bon vivant lifestyle of being “between projects,” he started courting the idea of getting back into comedy (he had been in desperate need of some kind of regular work, where there is free time there is time for him to have staged his very own _ Saved by the Bell _ retrospective and he refused to let himself make it through _ The College Years _). He’s been in talks (real, positive talks) with a smaller-time agent and he’s been actually writing his own stuff. He’s not sure how good it is, but he’s been performing pretty solidly at open mics and opening at some small venues, so he’s feeling pretty good. It might just be name recognition that’s getting him in, but he’ll take it. He’s still feeling it out and hasn’t said much to his friends about it. And won’t, not until he’s good enough that he can at least show off a little.

His main focus, even more than the show he’s about to do, is making it to the weekend. The members of the Losers Club Revival all somehow arranged their schedules to allow a weekend meetup, celebrating six months of re-friendship. It should be embarrassing, it gives mad childish “camp friend” vibes, but everyone seems to be over-looking that. It’s more fun to be excited and they’re too old to care if they’re acting like kids, probably. They’ve decided to meet in Chicago, as a sort of housewarming for Richie and because he’s the most centrally located between all of them and he’s pretty psyched that he’s maintaining his destination status with this family too. 

He’s sipping on a diet soda, going back over his notes for his tight ten tonight when the stage manager pops her head in the door to let him know that it’s two ’til go. He thanks her, hops up from the couch, and by the time he’s steeled himself into not throwing up, they’re announcing his name and he’s doing that peppy jog onto the stage he feels like comedians are professionally obligated to do.

“Hey! Hello, Chicago! Which I say as if I’m ever performing in any other cities anymore. How are we doing tonight?” he greets the same way he generally does before jumping right into his material. It’s all his now, and it’s pretty hit or miss, but it’s honest and he loves it in a way he never thought he could before.

“I don’t know if any of you are familiar with my old work—“ There’s a small smattering of cheering, which is _ embarrassing, _ but he’s careful not to look out into the (small) crowd too closely, he doesn’t like to see exactly how many people are or are not there _ . _ “No, nope, don’t—don’t cheer for that! What are you doing, trying to butter me up? I’m not gonna go to prom with you, so knock that shit off,” he laughs. “Anyway, because of that, I have to make this announcement at the beginning of every show now. I have no idea how long I’m gonna have to do this, but I have to, uh, totally rebrand. So, hello, crowd, I’m Richie Tozier, formally of straight dude fame, now of homosexual un-fame,” he pauses for effect. “I get fewer gasps at that each time, but I kind of love to hear them. Like the little shriveled closet-case section of my brain hears that someone thinks I’m straight and gets all horned up over it, like,” he does a Voice, “ _ excellent, we’ve tricked them, Richie, all according to plan. _No, nope. We don’t do that anymore. It’s a hard habit to break. I realized I was gay when I was eleven-years-old and I was immediately like, ‘well, obviously this isn’t going to work’ and then leaned into that for thirty years.” That one doesn’t go over as well as he’d have liked, so he makes a mental note to workshop it a bit more before he decides if it’s a keeper.

“Now this next joke might be something only I think is funny, but, um. The one bad thing about being gay, especially at my age, and I mean outside of the, uh, hate crimes, is that it means that all my high school bullies were right? Not like, _ right _ , but _ correct. _ Like, they were _ mean _ , but they were also _ accurate. _I mean, they didn’t always get all the details perfect. A big one I’d get a lot, and it was always written on, like, bathroom stalls, and lockers, and picnic tables, and the windows of my mom’s ’92 Camry, was RICHIE TOZIER SUCKS COCK FOR CASH. Which, uh, I do appreciate them leaving the pricing up for discussion,” he lowers his voice, gravelly, “I love a chance to make a deal.” He clears his throat.

“But little do these people know, I do that shit for free now! Cash? Pfft, I do that shit for _ fun! _ Hell, I’ll do it whenever you want, for the low, low price of just saying you love me! And it doesn’t even have to be true!” He takes a sip of his pop. “I actually tested that joke with my mom, you know, to workshop it, get it right, get it tight, get it good to fuckin’ go, and let me tell you,” he pauses, “she loved it.” He holds back a grin when people laugh.

“I didn’t mind the graffiti too much because, you know, every second they spent holed up in a public restroom with a sharpie marker is another second they couldn’t be throwing rocks at me. I went through so many pairs of glasses as a kid, my family had a punch card at the fuckin’ eye doctor. ” He clears his throat.

“No, um, the graffiti didn’t go over well with my mother, she was always all ‘oh, what will the neighbors think, what will the neighbors think?’ But my father, my father he’d,” Richie falls into his tried-and-true impression of his father, “_ Ayuhh, Jesus Christ, Maggie, if the boy wants to be an entrepreneur, let him, maybe he can start pitching in on some of these fuckin’ optomotrist bills.” _

He does a few more minutes of material, wrapping up just about right on time, and goes backstage feeling pretty confident but with a laundry list of notes on repeat in his head. He makes actual notes in his phone, clumsy fingers making typos he’ll deal with later, and packs up his stuff while he can hear the improv troupe he was opening for get the suggestions started for their long-form. The main thing on his mind is how much he’s looking forward to the leftovers in his fridge at home when he opens the greenroom door and steps directly into Eddie Kaspbrak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post-ghostwriter!richie's comedy is inspired style-wise by maria bamford, who i adore  
i think vignettes with lots of voices would really be where he'd excel
> 
> i like to think that after he gets into the swing of his own stuff, he'll be able to make fun of his old material kind of like in [this bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF93eKrpz9A)


	9. Stood before You, God, and Subaru Doug

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sexual content

“Ow, asshole, is that how you greet all your fans?” Eddie says, arms folded, looking bratty and downright uncanny in the backstage of an improv theater in Chicago. 

“Fan?” Richie asks, still kind of overwhelmed and reverting to what he does best: teasing. “Did I just hear you call yourself my _ fan? _Fuck, I hope someone called the paper, we got a headline on our hands.” Eddie rolls his eyes at him.

“You gotta have at least one,” he says and Richie can’t help but pull him in for a hug. Eddie leans into him readily, and he’s warm, and here, and Richie could cry. 

“What are you doing here?” Richie asks, pulling back from the hug, unwilling to let himself let it linger. “You’re early.”

“No shit,” Eddie says, “I thought I’d come up early, see if your new material was any good.” 

“Well, alright, Siskel and/or Ebert, what’s the verdict? Two thumbs up?”

“That was you up there.”

“Uh, yeah? I’m sorry? Did you think I was someone else? I know it’s been a while, Eds, but you’d think you wouldn’t forget all this.” Richie twirls his finger in front of his own face. Eddie’s brow furrows.

“You know what I meant. It was good to see _ you _ up there.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Now let’s get out of here, I’m fucking starving and this hallway smells like cigarettes. Is this any way to treat a guest?”

“Oh, well, I mean, if you’re a _ guest _. You sure you don't wanna stay and check out the improv show?” Eddie gives him a look and Richie, laughing, gestures with his head towards the back door of the little black box theater.

They leave the building, making active conversation while yet to determine exactly they should go.

“Speaking of, uh, guests and shit, are you staying somewhere?” Richie asks, as they round the corner outside the theater, “I mean, I have an extra room, if you wanna save money or whatever.” It's just a suggestion and there's definitely nothing riding on it, but, _god, _it feels like there is. Eddie shrugs.

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping I could,” he says, “That’d been my plan, so I don’t actually know what I would have done if you said no.”

“Stay at a hotel? Could you imagine? Don't tell me you left your hotel tarp at home, you would’ve had to actually touch the sheets.” Their arms bump against each other as they walk. Eddie shoves into his shoulder.

“You do wash your guest sheets, right?”

“Lucky for you, I’ve had zero guests, so you’ll be getting the euphoric experience of brand new, untainted sheets.”

“Oh, lucky me.” 

“I can go in there and roll around in them a little, get them all nice and skin-celled up for you.”

They have to stop walking after a few minutes to crowd together in the mouth of an alley and pull out their phones to fight over where to eat. They’re debating the merits of Indian food versus Korean fried chicken, and it’s starting to get heated, although Richie, at least, knows he’s perfectly fine with either option. The argument lasts a few more minutes, until Eddie calls him a “Kentucky Fried Jackass” and Richie loses his shit laughing and lets Eddie win the fight over it. The Indian place is closer, anyway, and Richie’s only just remembering that, outside of the gallon of pop he drank before going on stage, he’s not really eaten today. They walk down the block and into the restaurant, being led to a cozy table for two by the front windows.

It’s familiar and brand new all at once, chatting about what everyone else has been up to, watching Eddie poke through and examine the gluten-free option he’d ordered while Richie himself shovels butter chicken down his throat, guzzling through glasses of pop like a terrified teen at a pre-dance dinner. It’s not a date and Richie won’t even let himself think that it feels like one (even though it does), but he still can’t help but smile, chin in hand, as Eddie gets on his case about aspartame after Richie has the waiter fill his Diet Coke for a third time. After a minute or two of dubious scientific explanation, Eddie seems satisfied with his lesson on chemical sweeteners and sits back in his chair. Bitching concluded, there’s nothing left to talk about except themselves.

“Is it gross if I say I missed you?” Richie asks, and Eddie scoffs.

“Yes, it’s disgusting. I missed you too.”

“Even though I have shitty taste in restaurants?” He slurps at his drink.

“Somehow.” Richie laughs at him, but draws up short. As much as he loves that Eddie’s here (and he _ really loves _ that he’s here), he has no idea _ why _he’s here.

“Hey,” he starts, “what are you doing here?” 

“What?” Eddie asks, and he looks startled. Richie clarifies:

“How did you know even know I had a show going on? I didn’t think I talked about it in the group.” He knows he didn't, he's been very careful about that. Eddie relaxes.

“You didn’t. I, uh, now don’t get fucking weird about this, but I asked your dad.” Richie laughs, shocked. “I just, I wanted to see you, and you weren’t really saying anything specific over text, so I thought I’d just—“

“Have a nice little convo with Dr. Went?” Richie interrupts and Eddie shrugs at him. “Man, I’m honestly not surprised, he always, like, really fucking liked you,” Richie explains. “He actually always called you ‘Eddie with the Good Teeth,’ so I think Beyoncé owes my dad a writing credit.” Eddie shakes his head.

“I don’t get it, he wasn’t even my dentist. My mother wouldn’t let me go to him.”

“I gotta stand with your mom on this one, Eds, and not just because of our passionate love affair. The man had no business being responsible for that many sharp tools in people’s mouths. I swear to god, I don’t know if you can get malpractice sued as a dentist, but the fact that he never bankrupted us over majorly fucking someone’s shit up is a miracle. But, the man can determine gum health from across a room, I’ll give him that.” 

Eddie laughs, and Richie considers it a triumph that Eddie overlooks both the mom joke and the nickname. A silence falls over them that’s just on the edge of comfortable, but not quite. Richie starts sorting through his mental rolodex of jokes, goofs, and other conversation points to move things along, but Eddie speaks before he can make a decision.

“Thank you,” he says, “for letting me pick the restaurant.”

“I didn’t ‘let’ you do anything, you won that argument fair and square. Plus,” Richie leans across the table, snatching Eddie’s hand up in his and warbling in his best (worst) sleazy French accent, “Zere iz nothing too good for mon cher Édouard Spaghédouard.” He kisses his hand.

“Yeah, okay, get off me, Gérard Depar-douchebag,” Eddie rolls his eyes and starts to pull away. Richie watches his soft, likely manicured left hand start to slide from his loose grip. 

Hey.

Wait.

Wait a minute. 

Richie leans back in towards Eddie’s hand in his. Eddie’s bare hand, naked hand, _ unadorned _hand in his. He doesn’t let go and Eddie stops pulling away. 

There are many reasonable explanations for this (not that the explanation that Richie wants is unreasonable for any reason other than Richie wanting it). Too many to list, but Richie’s mind gives it a pretty good try anyway: he lost it, he’s getting it cleaned, he’s getting it resized, it fell down a sink, it fell down a toilet, it fell down a fucking sewer grate, the TSA made him take it off and he forgot to put it back on, he was running low on cash and sold it to buy his wife, like, _hair,_ or whatever happens in that story. The possibilities are lengthy if not endless. He’s still looking at Eddie’s hand.

He looks up at Eddie, whose eyebrows are nearing his (thick, and healthy, and way better than Richie’s) hairline. 

He looks back down at the hand, back up, back down, back up, and gestures with his head as if to say, “okay, so what’s, uh, what’s up with this?”

“Eddie, did you,” he starts, slow, “did you get… un...married?” Eddie grimaces.

“The word is divorced, dumbass.”

“What? Like, from your wife?”

“No, from your mom. Give me my hand back.” Eddie still doesn’t move his hand and Richie still doesn’t let go of it. The metaphorical rusty gears that make up Richie’s thinking process are turning, turning, churning, but he doesn’t know why they can't figure out whatever it is he's supposed to do with this hot, new information. After spending far too long staring at Eddie from across the table, he drops his hand, knowing he should probably say something that isn’t a joke, and doesn’t accidentally (?) come off with some kind of _ implication. _

“Yowza,” he says, like an _ idiot _.

“Yowza? That’s what you’re going with?”

“I mean, shit, man, I don’t know what to say? I’m sorry?” For your loss? Sorry for the loss of your marriage? 

“Don’t—don’t apologize. It was, um, for the best.”

“Congratulations?” For your loss? Congratulations for the loss of your marriage?

“Okay, I mean. It’s still a divorce, dude.”

“Well, fuck, Eddie, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything, dickhole, I just wanted to tell you.”

“You didn’t _ tell me _ anything. I had to go all ‘spot the difference’ like a goddamn _ Highlights for Kids _.” 

“Fuck off, I was going to tell you. I just didn’t have the—”

“When? Were you just gonna gesticulate with your left hand all night until I sleuthed it out?”

“Why are you making this difficult?” They’re falling into a rhythm, a very familiar song-and-dance, an equally matched tennis volley of back-and-forth bickering and it feels _ good, _better and better as their energy and voices rise.

“I’m making this difficult? I don’t give news exclusively in body language. What was plan B, flags?”

“Oh my fucking _ god, _ that’s not what I was doing. I wanted, I wanted to have a whole fucking talk with you about it, you dick, because it’s _about you._”

Oh. Well.

Their waiter brings the check. They hadn’t asked for it. Hint taken, Richie nabs it off the table to pay the bill, just leaving cash, and they exit the restaurant. He pulls his phone out when they step onto the sidewalk, ordering a ride back to his place because he doesn’t know what conversation they’re about to have but he’d rather not have it on the red line.

They stand side by side, huddled too close between a thin tree and a newspaper dispenser, but not talking. Within three minutes, Doug in a blue Subaru Impreza rolls up and, after he checks the driver’s name and license plate, Eddie slides into the backseat. Richie briefly considers climbing into shotgun instead, but decides against it.

They’re settled together in the small backseat and Richie’s trying to maintain space between them but Eddie keeps pushing closer, making their shoulders brush.

“That’s why I’ve been kind of awol the last couple months,” he says, quiet. “Moving out, getting my shit together, legal stuff.” Richie nods, and responds almost as quiet:

“Just the last couple months? Bev’s still working through shit with her lawyer, they’re not even close to sorting it. How’d you luck out?” Eddie shrugs and turns to actually look at Richie.

“Between the prenup and everything being pretty, um, pretty mutual, there wasn’t a lot of need for discussion. Real cut and dry, just a lot of paperwork.”

“Wham, bam, no thank you, ma’am?”

“Pfft. Sure,” Eddie rolls his eyes. 

“So, the, uh, the counselor didn’t work out great then?” He almost jumps when Eddie laughs.

“Actually, he worked out pretty awesome. Helped us realize pretty fuckin’ quick that we shouldn’t be married.”

“Oh?” Alright.

Eddie sighs, leaning his head back, saying, “I wasn’t lying when I said I love her, Rich.”

“Oh.” Shit,_ al_ _ right. _

“But, I didn’t—I didn’t love her in the right way. We didn’t love each other, like— like you’re supposed to. I don’t think,” he sighs, “No. I know we didn’t. I cared about Myra, I did, but I knew I’d never be able to love her as a wife,” he takes a deep breath and rushes, “That I’d never be able to, to love a wife. And I mean it didn’t help that we really brought out the worst in each other and that we— you know, you know seeing you again, back home, was like getting kicked by a fucking horse, right?”

Richie is drowning in implications at this point, holding his breath in the backseat of this tiny sedan, his mind running laps around his skull, and his heart, and taking a detour through most of his digestive system, making a real mess of things. He’d learned pretty young that wishful thinking is for stupid, dumb babies, but he’s having a hell of a time not being a stupid, dumb baby about this. He’s on the verge of just babbling for the sake of making some sort of noise, as Eddie chatters on, more or less repeating himself over and over, running his emotions through a thesaurus. 

“So, there,” Eddie says, finally, “and I’m sorry I snuck up on you like this, but—“

“Don’t be sorry. I mean, feel free to sneak up on me all you want,” Richie says, absently, face scrunched in thought. Eddie glares at Richie for interrupting him and Richie nods at him to keep going.

“But,” Eddie continues, “I wanted to tell you in person. I wanted to tell you first.” Richie’s head is still turned toward him, but his hands are busy fidgeting in his lap, he’s having a hell of a time trying to keep sitting still. 

“Really? Why?” Richie murmurs.

Eddie reaches over and puts one of his hands over Richie’s, lacing their fingers together. 

Ah. 

There’s a near lifetime of bullshit steadily climbing up Richie’s throat (decades worth of sweet nothings, and sweet _ somethings _, and half-baked poetry, and quiet contemplation, the loudest, longest yearning, the most ugly suffering and least subtle aching), and he’s about to unload all of it right here in front of Eddie, God, and Subaru Doug. Before Richie can let loose with the romantic monologue he’d been semi-consciously rehearsing his entire life, Eddie speaks again:

“Well, after Stan, of course,” he finishes. Richie stares at him, himself annoyed for a change.

“Oh, you petty asshole. You didn’t,” Richie says. Eddie grins at him.

“I didn’t,” he says, and Richie smiles back, soft. He adjusts his hand to grip Eddie’s tighter.

Reality comes crashing back into them when Doug (_oh, right, hey Doug, what’s up?_) pipes up, pointing out the window and asking Richie if it’s fine to drop them there. It is. 

Their hands stay glued together as Richie leads (pulls) Eddie into the building and up the stairs to his third floor apartment. He’s never taken the stairs so fast and he’s winded by the time he’s unlocked and shoved the both of them into his apartment. Taking no time to stop, or even slow down, Richie launches right into a tour of the place. There’s not much to show or tell, but his brain’s reverted to teenager-esque dumbassery, so he doesn’t know what to do outside of talking (and talking and talking). He only gets as far as showing Eddie such wonderful sights as The Hallway and The Kitchen before Eddie pulls him to a stop in the threshold to the living room.

“Rich,” he says, “if I knew you were gonna freak the fuck out about this I would have, I don’t know, done it differently.”

“I’m not freaking out.” He is. Richie looks Eddie up and down as he takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders, never letting go of Richie’s hand. 

“But,” he says, “I didn’t want to wait to tell you something that I know right now,” Eddie says. “Something I want you to know right now. I’m not running away from this.” Richie is pretty sure he knows where Eddie’s going with this, and while he's vibrating over the possibility that he’s correct, he’s frozen over the idea of being wrong. Eddie’s looking up at him, expectant, and, _ ugh, _ why can’t he just— 

“Listen, Eds, I’m pretty sure I’m picking up what you’re putting down, but in case I’m reading this completely wrong could you just—“ 

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Eddie says, tugs Richie in by his arm, and kisses him. 

Richie hesitates for a second of pure anxiety before melting hard into the kiss, finally letting go of Eddie’s hand, only to bring it up to the side of Eddie’s face, his thumb skimming along his cheek. His other hand lands on Eddie’s shoulder, and then his side, his lower back, and then curls its way into his soft, brown hair as Richie holds back the urge to keep moving it, fighting the need to poke and prod at him to prove to himself that he’s really real and really here. That this is happening. It’s not a great kiss, on a technical level, Richie's been caught by surprise, the angle’s not ideal, but still. Richie’s mind is running both at a clip and not at all, his thought processes coming and going in fits and starts, completely incomprehensible but all boiling down to _ this, this, this. _

Eddie pulls back and rests his forehead against Richie’s.

“That clear enough for you?” he asks. Richie almost nods, but thinks better of it.

“I don’t know if I got all that. You should tell me again,” he says instead and Eddie raises his eyebrows at him.

“Stupid,” he judges, and leans back in. 

The angle is better, since Richie had been ready for it this time. Noises are being made, and Richie’s doing his best to pretend he’s not the one making them, until Eddie makes one too, and suddenly noises are the best things to ever happen to him. He loves noises. It’s an easy thing for Eddie to walk him backwards across the room, sending Richie crashing ass-first when the arm of the couch hits the backs of his knees. Richie’s still adjusting to his sudden location change when Eddie vaults the arm of the couch, crawling over the top of him. He leans in close, both hands on either side of Richie’s head.

“This,” he starts, “this is fine, right?” Richie nods too vigorously and makes himself a little dizzy.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yes, it’s fine, more than fine, it’s, uh, it’s great. Awesome.” Richie scours his mind for more superlatives, wanting to say any and all things to encourage him but he’s having trouble accessing the vocabulary section of his brain at the moment. “We should probably, uh, talk about this, right? Like, ‘fuck yeah, woohoo,’ but, um.” Eddie hums in agreement.

“Right, definitely, we should.” They stare at each other, sprawled on the couch like they’re in a basement at a house party and Richie’s knows that whatever happens, it’s absolutely going to fuck up his back. “Later, though?” Eddie suggests. 

“Yeah, later, definitely.”

“So, this is…” Eddie trails off, searching for further confirmation, further reassurance that this is okay.

It’s more than okay, it’s good. It’s very good. There’s probably an ideal thing to say, a perfect piece of comfort and encouragement Richie could give him.

Instead, he grins at Eddie and lifts a hand in a thumbs up. Sexy.

Eddie watches this happen from his place above Richie, taking in the cheesy smile and supportive gesture, and he laughs. Hard. He sits down, straddling Richie’s stomach and keeps laughing. Richie would be worried if he should be offended, but he’s giggling back at him, covering his mouth with the thumbs up hand. They keep cracking up every time they look at one another, until they’re both out of breath. In trying to calm down, Eddie’s hands have ended up on Richie’s chest, and Eddie looks down at them and then back up at Richie, a look in his eye, fierce and just on the brink of familiar. His brow furrows, and Richie, once a master at deciphering the wide range of Eddie Expressions, isn’t sure what any of it means in this brand new context.

“I love you,” Eddie says, and it knocks the air out of Richie. “So fucking much.” 

“Ditto,” Richie says, still breathless. “I mean, I love— fuck, Eds, of course I love you.” The smile that stretches across Eddie’s flushed face is tight, nervous, but when he leans in to kiss Richie again, it’s soft and sweet, only growing sweeter as Richie opens his mouth to deepen the kiss. 

“Are you,” Richie tries to speak in the spaces each time they separate, “are you, _ mmmf, _ I mean, if you’re just trying to get me to, _ mff, _ to blow you, you don’t have, you don’t have to go that far.” Eddie pulls back and stares at him. Richie winks and Eddie scowls.

“Are you referencing your own joke right now?” he asks. “I’m not, that’s not what I’m—”

“Because,” Richie interrupts, reaching up to run his hands down Eddie’s back to his ass, pulling him closer until their hips slot together, “that can be arranged.”

“O-oh?” Richie tilts his head, questioning. When Eddie nods, slow, Richie sits up, pushing his hands against Eddie’s chest to push his back onto the other half of the sofa. 

“I mean,” Richie starts again. He crawls over Eddie to kiss him, licking into his mouth, their positions now fully flipped. “There’s a lot I want to do with you.” He leans in further to say, “A whole lot I want you to do to me.” Eddie’s looking up at him, eyes wide. Richie rests his forearms on either side of his head, bringing himself in close to whisper:

“But I, like, just ate twice my weight in butter chicken, so we’re gonna have to put a rain check on most of the fun stuff.” He leans back to fully take in the exasperated look on Eddie’s face. 

“Wow, Richie, real fucking seductive.” Eddie huffs, but he still lifts up on his elbows to try to follow Richie as he sits up. 

“But,” Richie continues, ignoring him, “this I can do.” He kisses Eddie soundly before sliding his way down his body, reaching down to make quick work of Eddie’s pants, unfastening and sliding them down his thighs. 

Richie’s doing his best to keep his cool, but his brain is a relentless pulse of _ holy shit, holy shit, holy shit _ . He’d would like to think he’s good at this (well, the whole thing, but this in particular). His go-to response to the “how’s your head” joke is always “never had any complaints” and, unless someone’s left a bad review somewhere that he doesn’t know about, that’s a bona fide fact. The phrase "boner fide” enters his head and he pushes down a chuckle as he gets to the matter at hand (well, mouth). The last thing he needs is Eddie to think he's _laughing at it._

Like everything with Eddie since they re-met, this is an intoxicating blend of familiar and new, the weight of him on Richie’s tongue and the (incredibly ensuring) noises he’s making. He hums when Eddie’s hands find their way into Richie’s hair, gripping tight, but not pushing or pulling. And while that’s very polite of him, he can do better than that. Richie reaches up to his own head to grasp at Eddie’s hands, guiding him to push down, adding more pressure. 

It’s not long before Eddie’s (still very validating) noises become more frequent, become louder, and he’s trying to give a warning, which is _very cute_. Richie lifts up just to say, “Nah, shh, I got you, I got you,” before getting back to it, moving with practiced ease until, with a gasp, Eddie tumbles over the edge. 

Richie sits up, wiping his mouth, expecting to watch Eddie take time to catch his breath and regain his composure. But, instead he sees Eddie sit up almost as quickly as he had, reaching with one hand to pull Richie back in close and the other to struggle with the fly of Richie’s jeans. 

“Hey, you don’t have to,” Richie says. Eddie shushes him.

“No, I want to, just, just shut up a minute,” he says, struggling for a few more seconds before finally getting the button undone. “Why am I so bad at this?” he mutters and Richie snorts. 

“Dude.” Eddie looks at him.

“Sorry, please contin—_ eoughh, _ ” Eddie cuts him off by sliding his hand into Richie’s pants, wrapping tight around him. “Oh, _ oh _, okay, sorry, sorry.” 

“Stop saying ‘sorry,’” Eddie says, and Richie listens, holding onto him and resting his forehead on his shoulder. His knees are killing him but this is worth it.

Eddie’s movements are kind of shaky, which Richie expected, he refuses to think about Eddie's ex-wife right now (oh, wait, no, there she is, _shit_), but, because of that, he's not expecting, like, expertise out of him. He’s uncertain, but firm. He’ll start to find a rhythm, and right when it’s getting there, his hand will stutter out of it.

“Fuck,” he mutters, “Sorry, it’s, uh, new—this angle, I’m not—” Richie shushes him and mouths at his neck, while Eddie rearranges his grip.

“Calm down, Kaspbrak,” Richie says, panting, “you got it.” And he does, before long, get it well enough to send Richie spilling over his hand and gasping into his shoulder. They only stay put for a couple of minutes, catching their breath, awash in the closeness of it all, the precious proximity, until Eddie’s up and in the kitchen to wash off his hands. He comes back with a rag, and Richie tries to help (he watches, mostly) as Eddie scrubs at the lovely new stain on the upholstery of Richie’s lovely new couch (he probably should have sprung for leather when furnishing his place, but, in his defense, he didn’t foresee, well, _ this _).

Eddie sits back down on the couch next to him, after, and they sort of mash into each other, legs over legs, an arm around the shoulders, curling up together. 

“Wow,” Eddie says, and Richie nods.

“Wow.” He looks over at Eddie, nudging his shoulder. “I meant that, you know. I really do, like, love you and shit. Like, whole-hog, want to be around you forever and hold you and all of that. Not just the sex. I mean, it all kind of goes hand in hand. Dick in hand? I mean, you just fed a stray cat, man, because there’s no getting rid of me now, so I hope that’s cool with you.” The sleepy, nervous energy of his _ holy-fuck-we-just-did-that _ state has him rambling. Eddie clasps a hand around Richie’s arm.

“Richie, I love you, but if you don’t shut the fuck up, the only ‘dick in hand’ is going to be yours in yours.” 

“You love me,” Richie repeats, smiling, soft.

“Yeah,” Eddie says and Richie leans in to kiss him. He misses, however, as Eddie slips out of the way, sliding down the couch cushion. 

“Nope,” he says. “Brush your teeth.” Richie sighs, dramatically, and peels himself off the couch.

“What? Too good for your own—” Eddie cuts him off with a glare, but it’s venom-free, and Richie winks at him before turning down the hall to his bathroom. 

“And mouthwash!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah
> 
> also no offense to people on improv troupes, that was my life for like three whole years, but, uh, yeah


	10. True Colors: The Best of Cyndi Lauper, Disc 1 Track 2

“Wait, no, hold up, someone get a phone open, I want this on tape.”

“Fuck, Richie, it’s not that big a deal.”

“No, nope, I want proof you said it. Bev, you recording?” 

“Yeah, action. Come on, Eddie, the sooner you do it, the sooner he knocks it off.” Eddie rolls his eyes, facing the camera of Beverly’s phone.

“Fine. Yes, Richie. You were right and I was wrong. Korean fried chicken is good,” he says. He turns back towards Richie. “You know, I never said it wasn’t good, I just said like Indian food better. It was _one time_, _two days ago._” 

“Shhh, let me have this, I’m glowing in it.” 

The Six Month Losers Club Re-Reunion is in full swing, meaning that they’re all tipsy in Richie’s living room, sharing a huge selection of takeout because they’ve chosen to save the restaurants of Chicago from their eternally inevitable rambunctiousness. Or, more basically, almost none of them know how to have a conversation without yelling, so it’s better to avoid the inevitable “disturbing other customers” thing altogether. It’s so much cozier, too, the seven of them (plus the inclusion of Patty and the finally available Audra), draped across the couch and chairs, or spread across the floor, than they could ever get at a table in a restaurant. 

Richie and Eddie are sat next to each other on the floor, backs against the seat of the couch. They’re sitting close, but not  _ too _ close, but still  _ close _ . The last forty-eight hours has been a cavalcade of heart-to-hearts and serious relationship discussion between bouts of joking around, fucking around, and using each other as pillows while griping through episodes of  _ Saved by the Bell: The New Class _ (it fucking  _ sucks _ but Richie’s become a SbtB Completionist over the last six months, and if Eddie has to bear witness to that, then so be it). They’d had their final discussion about when, if, and what to tell their friends about the new “them” only two hours before everyone else arrived, while still in bed (after a careful hygiene regimen, Richie had finally,  _ finally _ gotten railed within an inch of his life). Exhausted, between holding each other, and cleaning up, and both pretending that neither of them had cried, they’d decided that it’s a good enough plan to just “play it by ear.” Richie’s not sure what that means, and he’d put money on Eddie not knowing either, but they were  _ tired _ and still had to spot clean the apartment again before everyone else came around. 

“Guys,” Ben starts, from where he’s huddled next to Beverly on the couch, “I really missed this.” A chorus of “awww”s rings out across the room. 

“Nice of Stan to join us this t-t-time,” Bill remarks from his perch on the arm of one of the chairs.

“Not my fault my life is more fulfilling than yours,” Stan says, stretching his legs out on the floor. Mike chuckles from his place across from him, saying much more sincerely:

“It really is nice to see you, Stan. We missed you in December.” Stan gives a small smile at that, and Patty nudges at him with her shoulder. She leans forward, addressing Mike.

“Stan told me you travel a lot for work?”

“I do,” Mike says, grinning, “I do historical research for some travel publications, so it’s been taking me all over. I actually just spent the last couple of weeks in Los Angeles working on a piece about some old, forgotten celebrity haunts.” Everybody listens as Mike gushes about his work and there’s an ease in the room. Everything feels warm, feels correct. A rush of affection strikes Richie in the chest, and he can feel himself getting a little choked up. He’s feeling incredibly sentimental, and it’s very, very gross how it makes his heart heavy and his head light. 

Eddie leans over to him, asking if he wants anything from the kitchen, before standing up and heading out of the room to grab a couple of drinks from the fridge. Richie watches him go, eyes trailing after him, until his attention is drawn back to the group by Bev saying:

“Stan, I can’t believe you’re just sitting on Richie’s floor like that.”

“Oh, I know,” Stan says, “Pat and I checked for toenail clippings before we settled in. All clear.”

“I can be clean, guys,” Richie says. “And I was a kid when the toenail thing happened,  _ Staniel _ , I’m different now. I’m a grown up.” He doesn’t sound much like a grown up when saying “grown up” but that’s just part of it, isn't it. 

“The floors really are  clean,” Mike compliments. “Good job, Rich.”

“See?” Richie says, looking up to see Eddie in the doorway to the kitchen, two bottles in hand. He’s stopped to watch the commotion. Richie looks away from him to address the room. “I’ll have you know I vacuumed twice today.” This is true, more or less, although technically Eddie vacuumed the second time. Bill laughs.

“Looks like you g-got a little bit of Eddie in you after all,” he jokes. Richie freezes, his eyes shooting up to where Eddie’s still stood in the threshold to the room. Richie raises an eyebrow at him, almost microscopically, begging permission to please,  _ please _ make this joke. Eddie, telepathic wonder that he apparently is, picks up on Richie’s plea immediately and rolls his eyes, before exaggeratedly sighing and waving his hand as if to say, “_ugh, fine, go ahead._” Richie takes a deep breath.

“Oh, let me tell you, Big Bill,” he says, beaming, “I’ve had a  _ lot _ of Eddie in me.” He glances around the room, gauging their reactions. Eddie’s is the quickest and most obvious, a front of annoyance on top of genuine amusement. A couple seconds pass before the rest of the room responds.

“Oh my god,” Stan groans.

“Ha, ha, holy shit,” Bev cackles, throwing her head back against the back of the couch. 

He can’t quite judge Audra and Patty’s reactions, he doesn’t know them well enough (yet, give it time) but Ben, Mike, and Bill are all displaying telltale signs of shock (albeit in different flavors). 

“Wait, what?” Ben asks.

“You? You?” Mike can’t seem to get a full thought out. Richie is fucking  _ loving this.  _

“W-wait,” Bill starts, holding his arms out as if to stop everything around him, “what about— what, Eddie, you’re married.” The brouhaha settles down at that, as the room remembers,  _ oh, yeah, right.  _ Richie’s grin grows more and more shit-eating by the second.

“No he’s not,” Stan pipes up from across the room, drawing attention to himself.

What?

“What?” Richie asks. Stan gives him a look, but Richie,  _ weirdly _ , doesn’t know what it means.

“He got divorced,” Stan says, slowly. “You know.” He pauses. “You guys know that right? He called like a week ago?” He looks up at Eddie. “Did you... not tell everyone?” 

The gears in Richie’s head stop turning as they slot perfectly into place. He turns to face Eddie, mouth agape.

“Oh, you asshole,” he says, “You  _ did tell him first _ .” If Richie’s earlier grin was shit-eating, it’s nothing compared to the one spreading across Eddie’s face now. Richie stands up.

“You motherfucker,” he says, loud, but he’s smiling again, he cannot fucking  _ believe.  _ “You petty, petty bitch, you really did it.” He jumps up and crosses the room, laying his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “I love you so fucking much, you little  _ shit _ .” 

Richie wraps him in a hug, pulling him in tight as his whole body is wrecked with affection. His face hurts from smiling, his stomach from laughing, his arms from hugging too fiercely. His head from thinking too hard about where he had been at this time last year, and the year before, and before, and before, and before for two-and-a-half long, long decades. He'd had what he wanted, he had thought at the time, what he _thought _he wanted. But, he doesn’t think he even knew  _ how _ to want then, not really. He can't speak for his friends, not really, but he doesn't think he's the only one.

It’s all happened so fast, it’s overwhelming. It’s exhilarating. And it’s fucking terrifying, looking back at the life behind him, telling it to fuck off, and running blind into what’s still to come. He’s not sure where he’s headed, but it’s somewhere he wants to be, and he knows he’s not doing it alone. 

“Hey, Mike, this is a party, isn't it?” Richie calls, turning to look at him, to look at all his friends gathered in his living room. “Put on some Cyndi Lauper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> call me big bill because endings are fucking hard
> 
> well, folks, this is ten thousand words longer than originally planned  
i have some other stuff in the works, but i like really gotta do my grad school apps that i wrote this instead of starting (priorities, am i right?)
> 
> thanks for giving this a read, i can only hope you enjoyed it  
(something something bottom richie rights)


End file.
